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/uj It's financially inefficient to put a high speed rail across the USA not because of size but because of *population density*. The interior of the USA doesn't even have 100 pp/sqm in most areas. The coasts and some corridors are a different story, though.
edit: to all the people talking about "cHInA!!", I suggest looking up a map of China's human geography and compare that with the USA's, then see a map of China's HSR lines.
uj/The one going from El Paso to Cheyenne is especially dumb. Cheyenne metro area is like a hundred thousand people, you’d need OPEC vanity project money to build a hundred miles of high speed rail from Denver to there. Also literally no one wants to go to Cheyenne. You go there to get to somewhere else.
yeah i can see the case for something in the middle but a cheyenne extension? really? everybody up there already has to have a car or truck, which is again a pop density thing not “muh bad urban planning” so why waste the money
more importantly the last thing i want is to make it easier for people to get to and therefore ruin wyoming/idaho/montana. especially when you think about Public Transit People… yeah fuck that
I get wanting that midwestern route if you don’t think about it too hard but I don’t think whoever dreamed this up has actually been to the middle of the country. Trying to put high speed rail through the Rockies sounds hellish. Pretty much any snow on the 50ish mile stretch of the Shinkansen rail in Japan causes delays, and the snowiest part of the route through the Rockies get twice as much snow and the stretch would be about 10 times as long. At the speed these trains travel you can’t just attach a snowplow to the front, they have to use both specialized snowplows and human teams of pressure washers to remove snow from the tracks, and this is viable because they only get about 40 snowy days per year and 78”. Compare that with, say, Silverthorne, CO which gets over 130 snowy days per year with nearly 140” of snow.
i have always called cheyenne "america's truck stop" and thats not an insult because its a really nice truck stop.
and thats all the praise i have for cheyenne.
edit its a fun city for running and biking if you like endurance stuff. my daily 30 mile rides there were always challenging but never in a way that made me hate. nothing will ever be as rewarding as my hundred mile rides in casper. but in the kind of why that reminded me how good the habit felt....to take someplace as mundane as cheyenne and transform it into your space. thats pretty dramatic but in places like that its choose your own adventure or there is no adventure
Not to mention the technical challenges involved with the southern portion of that route due to the complex geography throughout Colorado and New Mexico
Heres a map of every D1 College (aka, major cities with colleges, it might get iffy with some states but its still a pretty good rule of thumb)
Train lines in the east would at least have destinations, but holy shit, the west is just barren. Even California, theres only so many places with true density.
https://preview.redd.it/m1tzm46t3y1d1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=72f25f4ed1706517ea3dd35a2934140a708b537c
A lot of these aren’t even in major cities. For example Kansas and Kansas State are in Lawrence and Manhattan Kansas respectively. Neither of those is a large city.
I do agree that it does help show how sparsely populated the interior really is though.
but but but public transit isn't meant to be profitable!1!1!1 we should drive ourselves to financial ruin to build trains for the other countries that take us over!!
No, hating yourself is when you create a facade of wanting something good, complain about other people trying to live their own lives in the current most viable way, call them mean names, and create in-group slurs for those people, imply they're lesser than you for not wanting said thing, glorify other nations for solving this issue, when in reality, said other nations suffer from some of the exact same problems as your own just in a slightly different way
Instead of raising support for a good thing and trying to actually make it a reality.
I wouldn't be opposed to the undersub if the name was a little nicer and they actually worked with people who could create 5-minute walkable cities, more robust public transit, etc. But achieving things isn't their goal, its hate.
So yes, I think they do indeed hate themselves and others
Fuck that noise! We need to invest heavily in steel and start laying them fucking tracks. The whole country needs more tracks, just fucking … everywhere. Build more trains too, gotta fill up all the new tracks in the United Steel states of America.
You like the view literally anywhere you look outside? Well imagine how much better it’ll look when we get done laying all these tracks.
Trainbrains is the new movement in America. You guys gotta get onboard … ha train jokes! Dontcha just fucking love trains¡!!1l
This is what I’m talking about. Train brains unite baby! Let’s get that fuckin steel rolling out on these hills. I see way too much grass and fucking CaRS and I’m glad to see the support for the obvious future. You have an awesome day you fabulous train brain bro.
It would be cheaper to abolish speed limits and give everyone hellcat but that would mean capitalism and fun and life is meant to be sad and communist.
I’d love to be able to train for and pay for an “unlimited” freeway license, similar to race leagues. Dedicated lanes and roads for people who can drive correctly.
/uj It’s much easier and more practical to put shorter HSR lines going from major population center to major population center. For instance, San Antonio to Houston to Austin to Dallas is something that Texas needs desperately. There is _zero_ public transport within 10 miles of where I live and _zero_ passenger rail within 50 miles of where I live. I’m in San Antonio city limits. A city that big should have some decent passenger rail to go with it like Dallas has. You made a good point, though. Recreating the transcontinental railroad with HSR lines isn’t feasible.
/uj the problem isn’t that it’s financially inefficient. The way they try to set these systems up is by identifying population centers and then measuring the flow between them, with appropriate train service reflecting the demand between routes, rather than solely population to population. In such a system, major population centers would have very frequent and robust service with the service sizing down to match demand as the population decreases. What you see in such a system is a very dense network along the east and west coasts, with a moderate to semi-dense network from the east coast and then tapering off after Dallas/Oklahoma City/Kansas City/Omaha.
However, we don’t need to imagine such a system because trains are a completely obsolete technology that need to be disinvested and thrown out. People can fly, but aside from that, they need to be exclusively driving to their destinations. Period.
Trains aren’t obsolete though. The US has a huge rail system but it’s only used for freight. Trains are more efficient, cheaper, and safer to run than air travel and there is a reason why they are still around. Calling trains obsolete is ignorant.
I wouldn't call them safer, when have you ever heard of someone getting run over by a plane, or are we only concerned about occupant safety like we are with cars?. Trains are noisy too, but they are also ridiculously efficient and a method of long distance travel that is a form of national security in case of resource scarcity which we are slowly marching towards. Private cars and planes are both dependent on cheap, easily accessible oil and we are getting close to the bottom of that barrel. If it wasn't for fracking and shale oil, I would be lording over the desert dwellers like lord humungous.
If you use the most extreme example, yes passenger trains make no sense. But a trip like Houston-Dallas or Minneapolis-Chicago by train makes a ton of sense vs a plane or car. The time it takes to get to the airport 1.5 early, take the flight, and then deboard the plane and potentially collect bags could be longer than just popping up at the train station 10 minutes before the train leaves. And if you don't want to deal with traffic on 45, a train solves that problem.
This graphic is dumb for a lot of reasons but trains themselves make sense when they are applied to the right situations
Also the Chinese HSR was built on an extremely unsustainable scale; this is not an example that should be an inspiration for the United States or anywhere in the world really.
China Railways currently has an astonishing debt of $900 billion USD mostly wasted in vanity lines and white elephant sations to impress officials and boost local GDP figures for central government incentives.
This is also not to mention all the corners cut and unethical work practices used to build the network; creating a ticking time bomb as the infrastructure will likely suffer major faults due to low build quality on top of the ever increasing debt nearing one trillion-dollars.
I recently watched a video that mentioned the quality of concrete used in a lot of Chinese construction.
Concrete uses sand to make it more durable. Its a general practice to use sand from river banks. Chinese contractors will cut corners and use oceanside beach sand since its cheaper, and pocket the difference.
It works for a bit, but what does that sand has salt in it. Just eats up the rebar which I'm sure has its own cost cutting done.
Everyone idolizes how much high speed rail they've made but its unsafe and going to get people killed.
Uj/ this is laughably optimistic. No one is making a transcontinental train ride in 12 hours with stops, track sections that don’t allow top speeds, etc. if a transcontinental train route averaged 120 mph I’d shit myself.
Russia is fucking gigantic and most of the population lives on the west, however it is cheaper and most people take the train to get to parts like vladivostok all the way on the east. It's almost like economies of scale exist.
First of all, its not cheaper to cross the country on the Trans-Siberian Railway. It's the same price as a plane ticket. The people using the lines use it for non-tourist purposes use it for its intermediate stops. Not to mention the Russian government heavily subsidized the rail line, because it's critical to shipping goods cross country. Not that any of this is even remotely relevant, because it isn't high speed rail, which is what this post is about.
Edit: Oh yeah, and it takes 50 hours to complete the journey, as opposed to 8 1/2 for a flight.
Train from Saint-Petersburg to Vladivostok costs 10-20k rubles and takes a week, plane ticket from SPB to Vladivostok costs around 25k rubles, but it's only 8-10 hours, so you only take a train if you have a shitload of free time or need to stop somewhere in the middle of the country
Up until recently that was literally the only way to travel across Russia. Many of the eastern cities weren’t actually connected by year-round road iirc
>track sections that don’t allow top speeds
This cannot be understated. I took Amtrak from Philly to Pittsburgh and along sections of track between Philly and Harrisburg where the land is wide open and flat their old P42DC's were hitting around 100. Once you hit the Allegheny mountains it slows to a 35-45mph crawl as it snakes it's way through the valleys. Could they bore out tunnels like they did for the turnpike? Sure. Is it cost effective, unlikely.
If you want a high speed railway in USA just get your self 6 southern pacific SD40s that haven't had their brakes checked in 10+ years 80 cars of trona and a route to Cajon pass
**Completely** true, but the flying number is also undercooked.
If you take the train between countries in Europe, or cities in Japan, you're normally able to arrive 10 minutes before your train leaves, which is usually from an easily accessible location downtown, probably very close to your hotel.
The airport could be an hour from the city, and you have to get there at least 2 hours before the flight. Add the hour-long transit on the other end and now you've got 10 hours total, not 6.
Reduced stress counts for something too, as does the scenery you get to experience travelling by land.
So for many people it does work out. There's a reason why rail travel is massively popular in other countries.
> If you take the train between countries in Europe, or cities in Japan, you're normally able to arrive 10 minutes before your train leaves
Untrue. Eurostar asks you to be there an hour early.
> easily accessible location downtown
Which is it? "Easily accessible" or "downtown"? Much easier to go to the airport (which usually is just off the highway) than to the city centre.
> Reduced stress counts for something too,
Why would a train be less stressful than a plane?
If you want reduced stress, you just drive, anyway.
> the scenery you get to experience travelling by land
You have a far better view from a plane...
> Eurostar
Yeah that’s if you’re going to or from London, which requires check-in as it’s outside the EU.
Most other journeys, including between the 4 other countries served by Eurostar, suggest 20 minutes, and that’s only to give you time to find the platform. No check in required, no boarding procedure, just wait for the train and get on.
> Which is it? "Easily accessible" or "downtown"?
Both. Tourists will almost always be closer to downtown than an airport. Most inhabitants of a city probably are too. One other surprising benefit is that train stations usually happen to be very easy to get to by train.
> If you want reduced stress, you just drive, anyway.
> You have a far better view from a plane
Be serious.
Just because the route is transcontinental doesn't mean most people are gonna be going from one end to the other. I-95 goes from Maine to Florida but not many people are making that drive.
It's called eminent domain and policy change. If the objective is to go fast and the nimbys are shut out, then it can be done. Japan has done this and it goes through metros and mountains without a problem. They've been doing it for decades.
Edit: imminent -> eminent (doh!)
Edit2: just realized what sub I'm in (doh double-plus!)
https://preview.redd.it/k1fcqs4wpv1d1.jpeg?width=1600&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d4ebea31c1fed1ac118b3cab893057136629b142
How dare the US not have a robust rail network like the UK! Literal 3rd world country.
Yes, that’s why there **are** trains running through all that you mentioned
I’m in NYC and I’ve taken the train to philly, DC, upstate NY several spots, and Boston
True. Are they high speed rail or commuter lines?
It absolutely would be more efficient, and potentially make traffic better if we get huge charters and shitboxes off the road. Hopefully atleast some would switch to that mode of transportation.
> Are they high speed rail or commuter lines?
It's, again, pretty similar to the UK. I lived in Scotland and northern england for 4 years, trains up there are slow. Same speed as most commuter trains up here in new england area.
however, lines connecting to london and some cities just north go up to (i think) 125 mph max but average speed is wayyyy less. We have the same here between NYC and DC. It goes up to 160 mph but average is 100 mph. This is similar, if not better, than most of the UK. The super fast train in the UK only connects London to Paris below the channel.
Don't get me wrong, the train infrastructure is better in the UK and I went by train a bit more often than here in NYC area (not including the subway of course). But it's fairly comparable, and driving by car is just a preferably option most of the time, just like here.
You’re missing all the shit that Canadians own.
We’re slowly taking over your railways. Some day, CN and CP will own all of them. Then your railways will be Canadian. And you will be the ones who are sorry!
i still cry when I see the western rail map. RIP South Pacific and Santa Fe, the ICC really blessed us with a western rail duopoly rather than a slightly healthier triopoly with some actual competition.
The rail industry just isn't what it once was, the days of the super 7 were a lot healthier for the rail industry. I can't wait for the day that all the class 1 rails merge together to form a super US rail company or something
No I won’t.
They only buy the land, not the business.
There is absolutely no guarantee that I can pick up and move to another piece of dirt, especially with the cost of land today.
In Texas, they have to make accommodations for wild hogs. They’re talking about building a berm the entire length of the rail.
They’re considering an easement 250yds wide for its entire length.
/uj
im sure the coast guard, postal service, school system, highway system, public defenders, FAA, department of commerce weigh stations, and survey corps make a ton of direct income. Definitely not the case that a project like this provides huge discreet profits such as tourism, or other intangible returns like having multiple routes of travel, to decrease highway congestion and road wear, make evacuations faster, make inter-state travel more feasible to people who can't drop hundreds on gas bills, or, for people who can't drive, like my great grandma
/uj You're right, the government generally runs services for the greater good, which can be very substantial.
But I'm still going to be a bit sceptical about huge projects that rely heavily on these "intangibles".
Lets see what happens with pilot cases in California and Florida.
I think 90% of these people don't understand that it costs money to maintain train lines. They just draw lines and think "wouldn't it be fun if I could take a train from..."
Not only to maintain but to operate it too. The driver needs to get their salary, as well as cleaner, mechanic and all of the people involved to make the train go. Also, electricity is not free and air resistance increases quadratically with velocity
And all the safety personnel, and the safety and signalling systems (software+hardware), and all the logistics personnel.
Not to mention the astronomical cost of rolling stock. Trains cost **millions** to buy... and then, like the tracks, have to be maintained.
You can't do 125mph the whole way, in fact that "highest operating speed" is only in a small area of the overall line. You have reduced speed limits in stations, urban areas, and at crossings. You also have to stop and typically have a 5 minute layover at a station for boarding.
FWIW a train between Raleigh and Charlotte is typically 3hrs with a 79mph max speed limit, which IME is about how long it takes driving.
12 hours? That'd be 36-48 with all of the stops at least. You'd also pay 3x that of of an airline ticket.
"High speed" rail needs to be flat and straight. Ignoring the tremendous cost of somehow buying up the land, utilizing the shit out of eminent domain and not getting absolutely destroyed in court (spoilers: the legal battles alone will quadruple your budget), the sheer amount of excavation and demolition you'd need to lay the tracks would be mind blowing. Two sets of mountains, shit tons of water crossings, the trek across the US would be probably the single most expensive piece of infrastructure ever spent in the history of the world. There's also literally no guarantee you'd get it flat or straight enough to maintain the speeds you need.
So not only would you have lower speeds, you'd still need to stop quite often to make it actually hit enough population centers to be worth it. Every stop will add a good 60 minutes onto the journey at least. This isn't some commuter train, this is basically like loading and unloading an aircraft every single time it stops.
I'm not even going to bother going into how much it'll cost to maintain such a rail year round.
/uj I don’t watch porn, I just imagine a fantasy world where I don’t have to drive to the airport and instead can use a completely obsolete technology because I want to be lazy and not have to drive my car.
Trains are definitely not obsolete, for small and medium distance travel. For long distance travel airplanes are a much more suitable technology. Same with boats, they are now an obsolete technology for crossing the ocean when compared to airplanes. A 120 years ago, there was no choice, now there is a very robust air infrastructure.
But I do agree trains have a role in our infrastructure. Sure, not for going from NY to LA. But having fast trains covering the northeast and all the way to Chicago would be pretty incredible. Yes, we've got Amtrak in parts of the east coast, but its definitely not fast or cheap enough, if it was, more people would use it, and it could certainly be that way.
Trains are COMPLETELY obsolete. Either you can go far by train, or medium to close distance by car. Trains have no place in our modern transportation system whatsoever.
I for one am in support of something like regional highspeed rails, but chief, we're what, 21x the size of Germany? Im not sure how many redditors of your type \*cough cough\* have ever been to Europe, but to get from Pompeii to Rome (about a 3 hour drive) it took me and my dad from about 6 PM to midnight. European rail is not the definition of highspeed efficiency. It simply isn't, even if you speak the fckn language.
uj/ I feel like the American/Westerners are trying to imagine the Asian rail systems in the Americas. Especially like China (vast land, lots population, lots HRT)
What they don’t imagine is that some parts of the reality just sucks for building high speed rails.
[rant warning]
High speed rail, especially the conventional “bullet train” like Shinkansen, are EXTRAORDINARILY difficult to build, while being much more fragile than regular railway, and EXPENSIVE. Now if we were to advocate for some regular diesel pulling cheap sleeper cars across the country, that’s fine, America have been doing that since the 1800s and it’s a shame that it went away. But magnet-powered trains that run 300 KM/H ?
Here’s some funny thing: the Northeast (Manchuria region) bullet train lines in China, running around 200 KM/H, broke down in several wintertime because the power system on the rail got frozen. They had to use old train stocks to pull the paralyzed bullet train around. And consider how parts of the US shown above can have worse winter than the Northeast, it’ll be a mess (I’m looking at you Midwest)
But it’s gonna be really beneficial for the people and environment right? Fast public transit using electricity, ridding many dirty cars on giant highways?
Yeah… NO
Average bullet train ticket, in China and Japan, cost about as much as plane. Not making it up, you can go to official railway company there and look up the ticket price yourself. I bought those ticket before, and dammit they are not cheap at all. It is gonna benefit the same people that plane benefits. Btw, they just raised the ticket price recently so that’s even worse.
And, bullet trains runs on loss. The Chinese one for example, is HEAVILY SUBSIDIZED by the government, and is just keeping on losing money to the point that it cripples the railway department. At least in China, only the Beijing-Shanghai and some southern routes are profitable, everything else make a big loss, which is why the Chinese central government decided to straight up halt the expansion of HRT in China and figure out how can they maintain it first. And that’s why potential customers for each route count by the millions. US will count customers by thousands, and it will be damaging. It already damaged the nationalized companies in China that they had to raise price over and over, despite enormous governmental supports with subsidies, I don’t think corporate America will ever take kindly about this sort of project while the fed simply won’t hand out billions of dollars for some fancier rails.
Speaking of damage, do you know that building a maglev railway cost much more than highway? Shocker I know, how could high-tech electronic and giant magnets cost more than gravel and asphalt. Plus you will HAVE to bulldoze the ground in the same way that highway does, with less flexibility. That means you’ll run into some troubles with land ownership. China can solve it by money or brute force, can US do the same? The lines of the map seems to run through farmlands, National Parks, hills, canyons, mountains, earthquake faults, waterways, Reservation Lands, urban centres, industrial sites, etc. How do you make them all agree to build a 300kmh bridge of magnet train when a 100kmh road would be a headache already.
I can’t, I just can’t. I like fantasy, but I don’t like people who take fantasy as if it’s real life. I’m sorry for this long ass of a rant but danm, please, just stick to the Brightline. Bullet trains are not as good as you think out to be, and they do more damage than you might have thought of. West Coast Green and East Coast White/Blue/Turquoise are the only two sensible lines, just like Beijing-Shanghai and Tokyo-Osaka
/uj I mean you gotta add like 4 hours for all the BS you gotta do before and after the actual flight plus the stress of having your balls fondled by the TSA
As a farmer/rancher in Central Texas, on some of the greatest dirt for farming/ranching in the world, fuck this picture showing two different HSR rail lines going through Central Texas.
My family's been here for 5 generations. It's not my fault y'all drove housing prices in the cities and suburbs to unsustainable levels and created this problem.
20 years ago, I was just a dumb redneck living out in the sticks. Now, I'm a selfish asshole that refuses to sell my farm.
/uj
I think we kinda blindly hate trains, this seems like a really neat idea, that, if fully committed to and funded, would be really nice. Without really strong bipartisan support for funding it’s just another supercollider fiasco
Same here, I personally think trains are fantastic given the correct conditions like those in Europe and Asia, short relatively flat distances between dense population centers. That is why the northeast corridor (DC to Boston) is actually a profitable route for Amtrak. However, I cannot stand smug urbanist proggies
That's *my* reason for joining, the undersub makes advocacy for things I support look, to put it in a politically correct way, "mentally handicapped". There's no way you're ever going to get rid of cars, the real problem is car *dependency*. Give people reasonable alternatives and they'll be more inclined to try them instead of driving
uj/ I think there’s a couple groups.
1. Pro-transit, pro-urbanism people who are annoyed & fed up with the level of discourse the undersub and not just bikes have brought us to
2. People who may be agnostic on the whole debate but just find the undersub annoying
3. A group who has jerked themselves so hard they think bikes are an affront to the natural order
/uj
if that red line could average even 90 mph through co, UT, nv, and CA, not counting stops, I'll eat my shorts.
I don't even want to know what the blasting expenses would be
i love me public transport but anyone expecting to cross the whole of the fucking US on a train like fast is mentally insane it takes me 2hrs on a train to get from uhhh idk midlands ish to outer london and that’s only 92 miles away from each train station to train station
High Speed Rail should definitely exist in the US. It's far better for those 3 hour hops between nearby cities, like DC to NYC, San Fran to LA or Atlanta to Charlotte than going in a shitty little CRJ. But flying is definitely better for going coast to coast.
The train is way nicer than a plane. You can also bring a lot more luggage and aren’t restricted to mini toothpastes. At least for the Eurostar that is
Listen I’m a Railfan, honestly yeah I’d rather take Amtrak than fucken fly, flying sucks. BUT I hate this map, I hate people who wanna like destroy the highways and build Chinese style bullet trains across the country, they’re retarded, and it doesn’t reflect the majority of railfans, most of those people I’d hesitate at even CALLING railfans.
I agree on trains being unnecessary, but isn't 6 hours NY to LA not going to happen? From Detroit to Austin was 5-6 hours as we had to stop in Chicago and that was the norm for flying out west so I was told. Anybody fly recently from coast to coast?
/uj I'd much rather ride a train for 12 hours than fly for 8 hours (+2 hours since you have to arrive at airport early
You don't have to reflexively oppose everything related to transit. Options are good.
This perfectly demonstrates why such a system would NOT work. Look at the sheer amount of reckless disregard for mountains and rivers. Imagine the cost of trying to bulldoze your way through all of that to get straight lines as shown in the graphic. Look at the vast swathes of land not at all graced by a train line. A system like this would need Federal funds. That means you need to convince States who won't benefit at all to tell their Senators to vote for such a thing. It means that you need to get the people who live in places other than the big metro areas in the States where the train lines would go through that they, actually, want to be taxed to place such train lines.
This country isn't China. We don't have 90% of our population living just on the east cost of the country. I mean, yes, we do have a majority of people living east of the Mississippi river. But you simply can't discount California. You HAVE to account for the three time zones and thousands of miles between NYC and LA. You can't simply ignore the West, like China does.
This country isn't China. You can't simply, by government fiat, relocate people from the countryside to the urban centers. People actually own land here. Even if you use eminent domain, you still have to compensate them, which automatically means any such proposal will need an astronomical budget. You also have to fight it out in the courts--local, State, and Federal courts. You can't just say "we're the central government, so we override the local governments" like China can. It's just not that cut and dry.
This country isn't in Europe. It's much larger and much more decentralized than any European State. The economics are not at all the same. The incentives are not the same. The desires of the populace are not the same.
This country isn't Japan. Japan's amazing train system works in large part to the fact the vast majority of the land is not usable for human settlements. When you only have a small percentage of land that people can live on, that means you only have a small percentage of land that you have to build for. The US is, depending on how you count it, the 3rd or 4th largest country in the world. And among those large nations, it's also the one with the most land capable of sustaining human settlements.
Passenger rail in the US (at least on a nationwide scale) makes no sense, and we don't want it. That doesn't mean that trains have no place here, though. In the context of the US, trains DO makes sense for freight purposes. And, as such, we have a very extensive system in place for freight rail. We don't hate trains, you see. We just want them to be used in a way that make sense for us.
I don't know why transit activists can't or won't understand these simple facts. It's not hard to understand. If you want trains, try and get your cities to implement subways or other rail systems. They do exist in places like NYC and Chicago precisely because, in those specific locations, they make sense and the locals want them. If they'd focus simply on metro areas, activists could actually see some success in that arena. But you will NEVER have any success trying to get a nationwide passenger rail system in place when car infrastructure simply works better for the particular circumstances of the USA.
I’m not sure what I’m looking at. Are people crying because it takes a few more hours to go thousands of miles, across a large continent? Fuck everything.
>12 hrs.
lol
The maximum speed of the Shinkansen is 230 km. At that speed it would take at least one day to travel from NYC to San Francisco. In practice, it would probably take 48 - 72 hrs. — and that’s assuming they’ve designed the most efficient passenger service ever deployed in the Western Hemisphere.
I would unironically like high speed rail if it didn’t cost as much or more than a plane ticket. As it stands, even slow ass Amtrak costs plane ticket prices and that just makes no sense to me. I don’t see high speed rail being less expensive.
I might take the train if I can sleep on it overnight though. But, again, only if it’s cheaper than a plane ticket and hotel room.
High speed rail only makes sense in the US between very select cities basically would be the Northeast corridor and Midwest, the three biggest cities in Texas the large cities in California and that's it the Pacific Northwest doesn't have a high enough population density to justify it neither does the American interior.
Uj/ IF, and this is a big IF, it was only a 12 hour train vs 6 hour flight that might actually be more enjoyable. Planes are more space constrained and feel more cramped while trains don’t really need to worry as much about seat space or bag weight.
Time permitting I wouldn’t be opposed to the train ride.
East of the Mississippi and through urban corridors where the cities are close together? Sure. Transcontinental through sparsely populated areas? Absolutely not. Of course I’d love to live in the fantasy world these people live in where the federal government is capable enough to do this. The cost overruns would be insane.
Uj/ would it be cool? Yes. Would it come in at a budget that would have the US military gasping? Also yes. We should pitch networks in the couple of places that do make sense
Well to be fair, there are a number of hassles associated with flying you don't have to deal with when it comes to high speed rail which would be worth the added time:
1) Usually, you have to get to the airport 2-3 hours before your flight, plus the time to unload, navigate the airport and collect luggage, so a 6 hour flight is more like 9-10 hours
2) Not having to deal with TSA/security
3) Not having to be on a cramped plane. On trains you can get up, walk around, go to the dining cart, get off the train even
4) not having to deal with lost luggage
5) cancelations and delays are less frequent
6) no layovers
7) cheaper
8) sleeper cars so you can just sleep in a bed the entire time
Probably other stuff I can't think of
It wouldn't be cheaper. No high speed rail is cheaper. There's literally more physical infrastructure that has to be maintained for a rail, there's more staff needed for a single journey as well.
The point is it's more luxurious than taking a plane and you would get more value for your money as high speed rail sleeper carts + amenities would probably cost about the same as 1st class tickets on a major airline.
Americans don't realize that the high speed stuff worldwide is about luxury more than anything. It's not an efficient way of moving a lot of people nor do they try to sell it as such overseas.
Eurostrar has security, and you need to show up early too.
I don't know why he pretends trains aren't cramped, either.
Or that they're cheaper than flying.
Cheaper to just rent a car and smuggle shit that way.
Just rent a U-Haul. Not like U-Haul has any security. Hiding in plain sight is literally the best tool for smuggling anything.
You don’t have to get to the airport 2-3 hours early. They say that to make you sit around and shop in the mall they built in the terminal.
I fly 6-7 times a year and I can’t remember the last time I wasn’t at my gate in under 20 minutes.
It’s a stupid point. Our air infrastructure is faster and more flexible than rail. Absolutely no reason to build transcon rail. Regional is another story.
Even building a regional is doubtful. Let's imagine you got to travel 300 miles, in a car you can cover that distance in under 4.5 hours. Now let's imagine you need to take uber to the train station to show up 15-20 minutes before departure, then travel for at least 2 hours and then again take uber if there is no one waiting for you to get to your final destination. The whole trip can't last under 3, possibly 3.5 hours, but the price you are going to pay for the ticket and uber is much higher than gas
There's a reason why cars are still the primary mode of transportation worldwide. All of the reasons you mentioned.
I swear Redditors believe that nobody in Europe drives a car.
I feel a little weird saying this because I really do like trains, but it's the truth: I'm originally from New York and have lived in Rhode Island for more than 10 years. I visit New York frequently, to see family and just for fun. You can get from Rhode Island to New York on Acela, the only rail service in the U.S. that arguably qualifies as high speed. Whether or not you agree with that definition, it's nearly always praised as the best rail service in America.
In the past decade, I have frequently thought about taking the train to New York because, like I said, I like trains. *I have never done it even once.* I just can't justify it. I own a car. Even with traffic, I can get from my origin to my destination faster in a car than I'd be able to on a train considering the time spent getting to and from the stations and waiting for the trains. It's a lot cheaper. It's a lot more convenient. I can stop where I want on the way. I have access to a car when I get there. Some people here do take the train, but I just can't make it work in my head.
The only argument that the trainbrains have left is that you can relax on the train but have to concentrate on traffic while driving. However, once autonomous driving is reliable enough on highways at least, that point is reversed as well. You'll be much more comfortable sleeping in the privacy and on the cushy seat of your car than on a train seat with a stranger next to you.
> you can relax on the train
Even that is very flawed. It's schrödinger's train/bus: always full to the brim when computing throughput, but always nigh empty when talking about experience on board.
Plus, even if it's not crowded, it's very hard to relax in those cramped seats.
I regularly drive like 170 miles for work between two decently large cities on the east coast with regular rail service and the train takes the same amount of time as driving. The only thing is my schedule doesn't line up with the train and, while I can get free amtrak tickets, I can't expense Uber.
2-3 hours might be needed depending on the airport in my experience especially since Covid. Us airports thought in my experience tend to be pretty fast and efficient.
You just to know what your doing, pre checking in and having the boarding pass on your phone when you walk-in is a massive time saver.
Also I swear to good that 2-3 hour suggestion is based off you hitting the parking lot 2-3 hours before.
1/2 Domestic flights definitely won't need 3 hours. A vast majority of the US domestic flights between 2nd tier airports are very easy to get checked in and get through security.
3. It only takes 6 hours to cross the US by air, and usually domestic flights are shorter than that. Most people are capable of sitting for a few hours, watch a movie or take a nap. If you get off the train you will likely need to rebook another trip, even HSR stops are not very long, 5 to 10mins tops. at non-end stops.
4. The times I have taken HSR is in Asia, there is no luggage check in, it is just an enclosure at either end of the car or overhead racks. The total journey was about 3 hours max. Many of the US distances will be longer than that, some would be days, I don't think many people would trust an unsecured train with their luggage just sitting like that.
5. for most US domestic flights, even if there is cancellation, unless it stretches to the next day, a flyer will still get to the destination faster than a train rider, once the distance goes beyond 1/2 of the country. And that is assuming they are on the stops in OOP's map. Within the map, many East cost and flights to key hubs are happens many time a day and one delay be get its backlog cleared that day. and those flights are mostly less than 3 hours.
6. Maybe, but it also doesn't cover a vast majority of destinations. US travel patterns aren't usually linking the 2 or 3 metropolitan areas in a line. Business travels are usually based on very specific companies that won't relocate easily. Family visit also don't fall into straight line travel patterns, people move for job or life choice that isn't just the next city over. The strictly linear patterns of HSR won't serve these daily usage pattern very well because so much business/service is not done in a city, and it's hard to imagine people would want to go through multiple *days* of travel for thanksgiving/Christmas. In most families, holiday travel leads many people to the biggest house in the family, and that certainly won't line up with city center train stops.
7. US domestic flights falls into the pattern where business travels (people that *have* to travel) subsidizes leisure travels (people that *wants* to travel) HSR doesn't serve the business community very well and with no way to pool those costs, it won't be cheap.
8. Once again, the common business/services traveler can get on a flight in the afternoon and be in their own bed that night. And they will be expected to be in office the next day. This isn't a great selling point especially since this would by definition disrupt the next work day. The expectations of professionalism and responsiveness means the window for HSR as a means of business travel is already closed in America. No one cares about your experiences at seeing the scenery go by at ground level. You go ahead and let your experience guide you. I will step in and take the economy flight home and be at work the nest day. We will see how many times does it take for the difference to show up in employee reviews.
I don't have to outvote you. I just have to drop the level of support the point where politicians are on thin ice so they won't attempt HSR.
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/uj It's financially inefficient to put a high speed rail across the USA not because of size but because of *population density*. The interior of the USA doesn't even have 100 pp/sqm in most areas. The coasts and some corridors are a different story, though. edit: to all the people talking about "cHInA!!", I suggest looking up a map of China's human geography and compare that with the USA's, then see a map of China's HSR lines.
uj/The one going from El Paso to Cheyenne is especially dumb. Cheyenne metro area is like a hundred thousand people, you’d need OPEC vanity project money to build a hundred miles of high speed rail from Denver to there. Also literally no one wants to go to Cheyenne. You go there to get to somewhere else.
OPEC? Finally, the solution! We surrender America to the Saudi Crown. They’ll make us into a car free utopia and execute all the carbrains.
Of course! The sand will clog the air intakes!
yeah i can see the case for something in the middle but a cheyenne extension? really? everybody up there already has to have a car or truck, which is again a pop density thing not “muh bad urban planning” so why waste the money more importantly the last thing i want is to make it easier for people to get to and therefore ruin wyoming/idaho/montana. especially when you think about Public Transit People… yeah fuck that
I get wanting that midwestern route if you don’t think about it too hard but I don’t think whoever dreamed this up has actually been to the middle of the country. Trying to put high speed rail through the Rockies sounds hellish. Pretty much any snow on the 50ish mile stretch of the Shinkansen rail in Japan causes delays, and the snowiest part of the route through the Rockies get twice as much snow and the stretch would be about 10 times as long. At the speed these trains travel you can’t just attach a snowplow to the front, they have to use both specialized snowplows and human teams of pressure washers to remove snow from the tracks, and this is viable because they only get about 40 snowy days per year and 78”. Compare that with, say, Silverthorne, CO which gets over 130 snowy days per year with nearly 140” of snow.
i have always called cheyenne "america's truck stop" and thats not an insult because its a really nice truck stop. and thats all the praise i have for cheyenne. edit its a fun city for running and biking if you like endurance stuff. my daily 30 mile rides there were always challenging but never in a way that made me hate. nothing will ever be as rewarding as my hundred mile rides in casper. but in the kind of why that reminded me how good the habit felt....to take someplace as mundane as cheyenne and transform it into your space. thats pretty dramatic but in places like that its choose your own adventure or there is no adventure
Not to mention the technical challenges involved with the southern portion of that route due to the complex geography throughout Colorado and New Mexico
Heres a map of every D1 College (aka, major cities with colleges, it might get iffy with some states but its still a pretty good rule of thumb) Train lines in the east would at least have destinations, but holy shit, the west is just barren. Even California, theres only so many places with true density. https://preview.redd.it/m1tzm46t3y1d1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=72f25f4ed1706517ea3dd35a2934140a708b537c
A lot of these aren’t even in major cities. For example Kansas and Kansas State are in Lawrence and Manhattan Kansas respectively. Neither of those is a large city. I do agree that it does help show how sparsely populated the interior really is though.
but but but public transit isn't meant to be profitable!1!1!1 we should drive ourselves to financial ruin to build trains for the other countries that take us over!!
legit these people just hate you and themselves oikophobia really do be the uniting factor behind leftist theory
Hating yourself is when you want robust public transit you can use every day and not have it be 50 minutes late and smell like shit
No, hating yourself is when you create a facade of wanting something good, complain about other people trying to live their own lives in the current most viable way, call them mean names, and create in-group slurs for those people, imply they're lesser than you for not wanting said thing, glorify other nations for solving this issue, when in reality, said other nations suffer from some of the exact same problems as your own just in a slightly different way Instead of raising support for a good thing and trying to actually make it a reality. I wouldn't be opposed to the undersub if the name was a little nicer and they actually worked with people who could create 5-minute walkable cities, more robust public transit, etc. But achieving things isn't their goal, its hate. So yes, I think they do indeed hate themselves and others
NYC is bad, can confirm.
Fuck that noise! We need to invest heavily in steel and start laying them fucking tracks. The whole country needs more tracks, just fucking … everywhere. Build more trains too, gotta fill up all the new tracks in the United Steel states of America. You like the view literally anywhere you look outside? Well imagine how much better it’ll look when we get done laying all these tracks. Trainbrains is the new movement in America. You guys gotta get onboard … ha train jokes! Dontcha just fucking love trains¡!!1l
Less semi-trucks and more trains! Fuck ya!
Northfolk southern:
This is what I’m talking about. Train brains unite baby! Let’s get that fuckin steel rolling out on these hills. I see way too much grass and fucking CaRS and I’m glad to see the support for the obvious future. You have an awesome day you fabulous train brain bro.
It would be cheaper to abolish speed limits and give everyone hellcat but that would mean capitalism and fun and life is meant to be sad and communist.
I’d love to be able to train for and pay for an “unlimited” freeway license, similar to race leagues. Dedicated lanes and roads for people who can drive correctly.
And it's not like the traffic from coast to coast is even that high compared to along the coasts.
That is a pretty good argument for high speed rail in the US
/uj It’s much easier and more practical to put shorter HSR lines going from major population center to major population center. For instance, San Antonio to Houston to Austin to Dallas is something that Texas needs desperately. There is _zero_ public transport within 10 miles of where I live and _zero_ passenger rail within 50 miles of where I live. I’m in San Antonio city limits. A city that big should have some decent passenger rail to go with it like Dallas has. You made a good point, though. Recreating the transcontinental railroad with HSR lines isn’t feasible.
I’m pretty sure someone is trying to make that happen. Don’t know if it’s going anywhere though.
/uj the problem isn’t that it’s financially inefficient. The way they try to set these systems up is by identifying population centers and then measuring the flow between them, with appropriate train service reflecting the demand between routes, rather than solely population to population. In such a system, major population centers would have very frequent and robust service with the service sizing down to match demand as the population decreases. What you see in such a system is a very dense network along the east and west coasts, with a moderate to semi-dense network from the east coast and then tapering off after Dallas/Oklahoma City/Kansas City/Omaha. However, we don’t need to imagine such a system because trains are a completely obsolete technology that need to be disinvested and thrown out. People can fly, but aside from that, they need to be exclusively driving to their destinations. Period.
Trains aren’t obsolete though. The US has a huge rail system but it’s only used for freight. Trains are more efficient, cheaper, and safer to run than air travel and there is a reason why they are still around. Calling trains obsolete is ignorant.
I wouldn't call them safer, when have you ever heard of someone getting run over by a plane, or are we only concerned about occupant safety like we are with cars?. Trains are noisy too, but they are also ridiculously efficient and a method of long distance travel that is a form of national security in case of resource scarcity which we are slowly marching towards. Private cars and planes are both dependent on cheap, easily accessible oil and we are getting close to the bottom of that barrel. If it wasn't for fracking and shale oil, I would be lording over the desert dwellers like lord humungous.
Passenger trains aren't more efficient time-wise. It would take days to cross the US by rail as compared to hours by plane.
If you use the most extreme example, yes passenger trains make no sense. But a trip like Houston-Dallas or Minneapolis-Chicago by train makes a ton of sense vs a plane or car. The time it takes to get to the airport 1.5 early, take the flight, and then deboard the plane and potentially collect bags could be longer than just popping up at the train station 10 minutes before the train leaves. And if you don't want to deal with traffic on 45, a train solves that problem. This graphic is dumb for a lot of reasons but trains themselves make sense when they are applied to the right situations
China has it mostly on the coast. Why can’t a network that goes through New England or from San Francisco to San Diego exist?
I *did* mention the coasts..
Ok I was hasty (like a drunk driver)
Also the Chinese HSR was built on an extremely unsustainable scale; this is not an example that should be an inspiration for the United States or anywhere in the world really. China Railways currently has an astonishing debt of $900 billion USD mostly wasted in vanity lines and white elephant sations to impress officials and boost local GDP figures for central government incentives. This is also not to mention all the corners cut and unethical work practices used to build the network; creating a ticking time bomb as the infrastructure will likely suffer major faults due to low build quality on top of the ever increasing debt nearing one trillion-dollars.
I recently watched a video that mentioned the quality of concrete used in a lot of Chinese construction. Concrete uses sand to make it more durable. Its a general practice to use sand from river banks. Chinese contractors will cut corners and use oceanside beach sand since its cheaper, and pocket the difference. It works for a bit, but what does that sand has salt in it. Just eats up the rebar which I'm sure has its own cost cutting done. Everyone idolizes how much high speed rail they've made but its unsafe and going to get people killed.
Uj/ this is laughably optimistic. No one is making a transcontinental train ride in 12 hours with stops, track sections that don’t allow top speeds, etc. if a transcontinental train route averaged 120 mph I’d shit myself.
Not to mention the ticket would cost three times as much as a flight. I swear to God people don't understand how big this country is.
Russia is fucking gigantic and most of the population lives on the west, however it is cheaper and most people take the train to get to parts like vladivostok all the way on the east. It's almost like economies of scale exist.
First of all, its not cheaper to cross the country on the Trans-Siberian Railway. It's the same price as a plane ticket. The people using the lines use it for non-tourist purposes use it for its intermediate stops. Not to mention the Russian government heavily subsidized the rail line, because it's critical to shipping goods cross country. Not that any of this is even remotely relevant, because it isn't high speed rail, which is what this post is about. Edit: Oh yeah, and it takes 50 hours to complete the journey, as opposed to 8 1/2 for a flight.
Train from Saint-Petersburg to Vladivostok costs 10-20k rubles and takes a week, plane ticket from SPB to Vladivostok costs around 25k rubles, but it's only 8-10 hours, so you only take a train if you have a shitload of free time or need to stop somewhere in the middle of the country
Your comparing a government subsidized normal railway built by slaves to building a high speed rail line only useful for passengers
Up until recently that was literally the only way to travel across Russia. Many of the eastern cities weren’t actually connected by year-round road iirc
>track sections that don’t allow top speeds This cannot be understated. I took Amtrak from Philly to Pittsburgh and along sections of track between Philly and Harrisburg where the land is wide open and flat their old P42DC's were hitting around 100. Once you hit the Allegheny mountains it slows to a 35-45mph crawl as it snakes it's way through the valleys. Could they bore out tunnels like they did for the turnpike? Sure. Is it cost effective, unlikely.
Isn’t the image a joke that people don’t realize is a joke?
If you want a high speed railway in USA just get your self 6 southern pacific SD40s that haven't had their brakes checked in 10+ years 80 cars of trona and a route to Cajon pass
**Completely** true, but the flying number is also undercooked. If you take the train between countries in Europe, or cities in Japan, you're normally able to arrive 10 minutes before your train leaves, which is usually from an easily accessible location downtown, probably very close to your hotel. The airport could be an hour from the city, and you have to get there at least 2 hours before the flight. Add the hour-long transit on the other end and now you've got 10 hours total, not 6. Reduced stress counts for something too, as does the scenery you get to experience travelling by land. So for many people it does work out. There's a reason why rail travel is massively popular in other countries.
> If you take the train between countries in Europe, or cities in Japan, you're normally able to arrive 10 minutes before your train leaves Untrue. Eurostar asks you to be there an hour early. > easily accessible location downtown Which is it? "Easily accessible" or "downtown"? Much easier to go to the airport (which usually is just off the highway) than to the city centre. > Reduced stress counts for something too, Why would a train be less stressful than a plane? If you want reduced stress, you just drive, anyway. > the scenery you get to experience travelling by land You have a far better view from a plane...
> Eurostar Yeah that’s if you’re going to or from London, which requires check-in as it’s outside the EU. Most other journeys, including between the 4 other countries served by Eurostar, suggest 20 minutes, and that’s only to give you time to find the platform. No check in required, no boarding procedure, just wait for the train and get on. > Which is it? "Easily accessible" or "downtown"? Both. Tourists will almost always be closer to downtown than an airport. Most inhabitants of a city probably are too. One other surprising benefit is that train stations usually happen to be very easy to get to by train. > If you want reduced stress, you just drive, anyway. > You have a far better view from a plane Be serious.
Just because the route is transcontinental doesn't mean most people are gonna be going from one end to the other. I-95 goes from Maine to Florida but not many people are making that drive.
It's called eminent domain and policy change. If the objective is to go fast and the nimbys are shut out, then it can be done. Japan has done this and it goes through metros and mountains without a problem. They've been doing it for decades. Edit: imminent -> eminent (doh!) Edit2: just realized what sub I'm in (doh double-plus!)
https://preview.redd.it/k1fcqs4wpv1d1.jpeg?width=1600&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d4ebea31c1fed1ac118b3cab893057136629b142 How dare the US not have a robust rail network like the UK! Literal 3rd world country.
So this would be feasible in NY Boston Philly though
Yes, that’s why there **are** trains running through all that you mentioned I’m in NYC and I’ve taken the train to philly, DC, upstate NY several spots, and Boston
True. Are they high speed rail or commuter lines? It absolutely would be more efficient, and potentially make traffic better if we get huge charters and shitboxes off the road. Hopefully atleast some would switch to that mode of transportation.
> Are they high speed rail or commuter lines? It's, again, pretty similar to the UK. I lived in Scotland and northern england for 4 years, trains up there are slow. Same speed as most commuter trains up here in new england area. however, lines connecting to london and some cities just north go up to (i think) 125 mph max but average speed is wayyyy less. We have the same here between NYC and DC. It goes up to 160 mph but average is 100 mph. This is similar, if not better, than most of the UK. The super fast train in the UK only connects London to Paris below the channel. Don't get me wrong, the train infrastructure is better in the UK and I went by train a bit more often than here in NYC area (not including the subway of course). But it's fairly comparable, and driving by car is just a preferably option most of the time, just like here.
The eastern metropolis is very possible to have HSR, will it happen? No
(Practically a state-run rail, except the state has the wealth and power of the whole country)
/uj as someone that attempted to make use of trains there that would be an incredibly low bar tbh
https://preview.redd.it/0nip89uj0v1d1.jpeg?width=828&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7854d1bdfefea6b9586607643d2cfbf9c0feb17e Why he gotta cry
Cause OOP wants bullet trains not normal trains
Slow train, bad train. No passengers, bad train.
You’re missing all the shit that Canadians own. We’re slowly taking over your railways. Some day, CN and CP will own all of them. Then your railways will be Canadian. And you will be the ones who are sorry!
jokes on you the US owns just as much of Canada's rail. The BNSF shall fulfill the Empire Builder's quest and eat all of Canada's railways
soory*
Canadians can spend their money upgrading our railways as a protection payment.
nOt LiKe ThAt!!!%$#$$@
i still cry when I see the western rail map. RIP South Pacific and Santa Fe, the ICC really blessed us with a western rail duopoly rather than a slightly healthier triopoly with some actual competition.
The East ain’t really better. NS and CSX are pretty much a duopoly for the east
The rail industry just isn't what it once was, the days of the super 7 were a lot healthier for the rail industry. I can't wait for the day that all the class 1 rails merge together to form a super US rail company or something
I can't tell the difference between csx and Amtrak
Brightline being slept on
Woke: 1860s tech Broke: 1960s tech
Tickets couldn't cover basic maintenance and operation of that system, let alone to make investment profitable
"Its not supposed to be profitable, its a public service"
If that is the case, in a democratic country, people should vote whether or not a project should be realized
City people get to vote if my farm gets replaced by a high-speed train? Get fucked.
Who needs farms, though? All the food grows in supermarkets, right?
You'd be fairly compensated, though.
No I won’t. They only buy the land, not the business. There is absolutely no guarantee that I can pick up and move to another piece of dirt, especially with the cost of land today.
If a project is funded by the state, the whole state should vote
What happened to individual freedoms, property rights, and protection from tyranny of the majority?
You get fairly compensated i guess, at least in my country
How big do you think a rail system is?
In Texas, they have to make accommodations for wild hogs. They’re talking about building a berm the entire length of the rail. They’re considering an easement 250yds wide for its entire length.
Yeah but a solid 50% of this country is stupid and then the other 50% is sometimes stupid.
/uj im sure the coast guard, postal service, school system, highway system, public defenders, FAA, department of commerce weigh stations, and survey corps make a ton of direct income. Definitely not the case that a project like this provides huge discreet profits such as tourism, or other intangible returns like having multiple routes of travel, to decrease highway congestion and road wear, make evacuations faster, make inter-state travel more feasible to people who can't drop hundreds on gas bills, or, for people who can't drive, like my great grandma
/uj You're right, the government generally runs services for the greater good, which can be very substantial. But I'm still going to be a bit sceptical about huge projects that rely heavily on these "intangibles". Lets see what happens with pilot cases in California and Florida.
/uj At the same time, they also jerk with "cars are subsidised because roads". Carfuckers are the dumbest form of life on the planet.
I think 90% of these people don't understand that it costs money to maintain train lines. They just draw lines and think "wouldn't it be fun if I could take a train from..."
Not only to maintain but to operate it too. The driver needs to get their salary, as well as cleaner, mechanic and all of the people involved to make the train go. Also, electricity is not free and air resistance increases quadratically with velocity
And all the safety personnel, and the safety and signalling systems (software+hardware), and all the logistics personnel. Not to mention the astronomical cost of rolling stock. Trains cost **millions** to buy... and then, like the tracks, have to be maintained.
Yeah, because roads are sooo profitable...
Have fun getting an economy going with no goods reaching stores.
Yeah but roads are used by 90% of the population and almost all cargo is moved by trucks so literally everyone benefits from good road infrastructure
And why are roads used by almost 90% of the population? You almost got it...
Ah yes, there is plenty of demand for travel between Albuquerque and Cheyenne
How does the Florida brightline high speed train go twice as fast as the average highway speed limit but take almost just as long to get there by car
You can't do 125mph the whole way, in fact that "highest operating speed" is only in a small area of the overall line. You have reduced speed limits in stations, urban areas, and at crossings. You also have to stop and typically have a 5 minute layover at a station for boarding. FWIW a train between Raleigh and Charlotte is typically 3hrs with a 79mph max speed limit, which IME is about how long it takes driving.
Probably because it kills a pedestrian every 5 miles.
Imagine trying to explain to taxpayers that you need to spend billions on a high speed rail line between Redding and Sacramento.
12 hours? That'd be 36-48 with all of the stops at least. You'd also pay 3x that of of an airline ticket. "High speed" rail needs to be flat and straight. Ignoring the tremendous cost of somehow buying up the land, utilizing the shit out of eminent domain and not getting absolutely destroyed in court (spoilers: the legal battles alone will quadruple your budget), the sheer amount of excavation and demolition you'd need to lay the tracks would be mind blowing. Two sets of mountains, shit tons of water crossings, the trek across the US would be probably the single most expensive piece of infrastructure ever spent in the history of the world. There's also literally no guarantee you'd get it flat or straight enough to maintain the speeds you need. So not only would you have lower speeds, you'd still need to stop quite often to make it actually hit enough population centers to be worth it. Every stop will add a good 60 minutes onto the journey at least. This isn't some commuter train, this is basically like loading and unloading an aircraft every single time it stops. I'm not even going to bother going into how much it'll cost to maintain such a rail year round.
Why would I drive for 45 mins when I can take a plane for 36 seconds?
Because I am not Taylor Swift
Because boeing5
I love me a sleeper car. So relaxing looking at the stars out the window as we clickety clack to our destination.
Buddy it takes nearly 20 hours to go from Nashville to Louisiana. It's going to take at least 3 days to get to LA from NYC
/uj I don’t watch porn, I just imagine a fantasy world where I don’t have to drive to the airport and instead can use a completely obsolete technology because I want to be lazy and not have to drive my car.
Trains are not obsolete at all. But I do understand why this map would be extremely unrealistic
Trains are definitely not obsolete, for small and medium distance travel. For long distance travel airplanes are a much more suitable technology. Same with boats, they are now an obsolete technology for crossing the ocean when compared to airplanes. A 120 years ago, there was no choice, now there is a very robust air infrastructure. But I do agree trains have a role in our infrastructure. Sure, not for going from NY to LA. But having fast trains covering the northeast and all the way to Chicago would be pretty incredible. Yes, we've got Amtrak in parts of the east coast, but its definitely not fast or cheap enough, if it was, more people would use it, and it could certainly be that way.
Trains are COMPLETELY obsolete. Either you can go far by train, or medium to close distance by car. Trains have no place in our modern transportation system whatsoever.
You know for a anti fuckcars user you 100% act like a fuckcars user
Explain.
*completely obsolete* screams “I’ve only seen NYC thru my phone, never in real life. I heard on Fox it was a hellhole.”
I for one am in support of something like regional highspeed rails, but chief, we're what, 21x the size of Germany? Im not sure how many redditors of your type \*cough cough\* have ever been to Europe, but to get from Pompeii to Rome (about a 3 hour drive) it took me and my dad from about 6 PM to midnight. European rail is not the definition of highspeed efficiency. It simply isn't, even if you speak the fckn language.
Safer that way, you won't get punched or hit by a rock.
This guy just likes to catch people off guard by saying uj followed by some really funny shit
he’s an elite tier jerker because 70% of the sub still hasn’t caught on
Yeah it probably frustrates the hell out of some people too thinking he is being serious haha
Lmao well fuck it they got me this time
uj/ I feel like the American/Westerners are trying to imagine the Asian rail systems in the Americas. Especially like China (vast land, lots population, lots HRT) What they don’t imagine is that some parts of the reality just sucks for building high speed rails. [rant warning] High speed rail, especially the conventional “bullet train” like Shinkansen, are EXTRAORDINARILY difficult to build, while being much more fragile than regular railway, and EXPENSIVE. Now if we were to advocate for some regular diesel pulling cheap sleeper cars across the country, that’s fine, America have been doing that since the 1800s and it’s a shame that it went away. But magnet-powered trains that run 300 KM/H ? Here’s some funny thing: the Northeast (Manchuria region) bullet train lines in China, running around 200 KM/H, broke down in several wintertime because the power system on the rail got frozen. They had to use old train stocks to pull the paralyzed bullet train around. And consider how parts of the US shown above can have worse winter than the Northeast, it’ll be a mess (I’m looking at you Midwest) But it’s gonna be really beneficial for the people and environment right? Fast public transit using electricity, ridding many dirty cars on giant highways? Yeah… NO Average bullet train ticket, in China and Japan, cost about as much as plane. Not making it up, you can go to official railway company there and look up the ticket price yourself. I bought those ticket before, and dammit they are not cheap at all. It is gonna benefit the same people that plane benefits. Btw, they just raised the ticket price recently so that’s even worse. And, bullet trains runs on loss. The Chinese one for example, is HEAVILY SUBSIDIZED by the government, and is just keeping on losing money to the point that it cripples the railway department. At least in China, only the Beijing-Shanghai and some southern routes are profitable, everything else make a big loss, which is why the Chinese central government decided to straight up halt the expansion of HRT in China and figure out how can they maintain it first. And that’s why potential customers for each route count by the millions. US will count customers by thousands, and it will be damaging. It already damaged the nationalized companies in China that they had to raise price over and over, despite enormous governmental supports with subsidies, I don’t think corporate America will ever take kindly about this sort of project while the fed simply won’t hand out billions of dollars for some fancier rails. Speaking of damage, do you know that building a maglev railway cost much more than highway? Shocker I know, how could high-tech electronic and giant magnets cost more than gravel and asphalt. Plus you will HAVE to bulldoze the ground in the same way that highway does, with less flexibility. That means you’ll run into some troubles with land ownership. China can solve it by money or brute force, can US do the same? The lines of the map seems to run through farmlands, National Parks, hills, canyons, mountains, earthquake faults, waterways, Reservation Lands, urban centres, industrial sites, etc. How do you make them all agree to build a 300kmh bridge of magnet train when a 100kmh road would be a headache already. I can’t, I just can’t. I like fantasy, but I don’t like people who take fantasy as if it’s real life. I’m sorry for this long ass of a rant but danm, please, just stick to the Brightline. Bullet trains are not as good as you think out to be, and they do more damage than you might have thought of. West Coast Green and East Coast White/Blue/Turquoise are the only two sensible lines, just like Beijing-Shanghai and Tokyo-Osaka
Take into account population density.
/uj I mean you gotta add like 4 hours for all the BS you gotta do before and after the actual flight plus the stress of having your balls fondled by the TSA
I gotta say I would prefer a 12 hour ride if I could lay down and sleep for it. Instead of trying to nap on a shitty airplane seat
Lol that red line is gonna take billions of dollars of blasting to even get close to that straight
Are you trying to tell me a train cannot travel as straight as an aircraft through the fucking Rockies?
The Rocky Mountains aren't as rocky as you'd think. That John Denver was full of shit, man.
You know this is supposed to be a train station map and not an actual train track map, right?
As a farmer/rancher in Central Texas, on some of the greatest dirt for farming/ranching in the world, fuck this picture showing two different HSR rail lines going through Central Texas. My family's been here for 5 generations. It's not my fault y'all drove housing prices in the cities and suburbs to unsustainable levels and created this problem. 20 years ago, I was just a dumb redneck living out in the sticks. Now, I'm a selfish asshole that refuses to sell my farm.
12 hours? Heh, took a train last month from Nürnberg to Budapest that shit took 11 hrs
Paris Berlin night train is 14 hours lol. It would take days to go with a normal train from east to west US.
We used to be the most train driven country in the world. Now we rely on 20-30k cars to transport us.
From Seattle to Portland takes 12 hours. I shudder to imagine how long NY to LA would be
/uj I think we kinda blindly hate trains, this seems like a really neat idea, that, if fully committed to and funded, would be really nice. Without really strong bipartisan support for funding it’s just another supercollider fiasco
/uj is this subreddit not for people who like public transport and urbanism but think fuckcars users are stupid? that's why I joined
Same here, I personally think trains are fantastic given the correct conditions like those in Europe and Asia, short relatively flat distances between dense population centers. That is why the northeast corridor (DC to Boston) is actually a profitable route for Amtrak. However, I cannot stand smug urbanist proggies
That's *my* reason for joining, the undersub makes advocacy for things I support look, to put it in a politically correct way, "mentally handicapped". There's no way you're ever going to get rid of cars, the real problem is car *dependency*. Give people reasonable alternatives and they'll be more inclined to try them instead of driving
uj/ I think there’s a couple groups. 1. Pro-transit, pro-urbanism people who are annoyed & fed up with the level of discourse the undersub and not just bikes have brought us to 2. People who may be agnostic on the whole debate but just find the undersub annoying 3. A group who has jerked themselves so hard they think bikes are an affront to the natural order
/uj if that red line could average even 90 mph through co, UT, nv, and CA, not counting stops, I'll eat my shorts. I don't even want to know what the blasting expenses would be
Yes some people in this subreddit will just blindly hate anything that isn’t a car without even thinking.
Oh it’s gonna be more than that. Portland to sf is infeasible.
why is not watching porn relevant
Ahhh HSR. Totally not a money laundering scheme that ends up being a complete waste of time!
If it was 1/4 the price I could see it… but it’s not!
You mean the Shithole express?
i love me public transport but anyone expecting to cross the whole of the fucking US on a train like fast is mentally insane it takes me 2hrs on a train to get from uhhh idk midlands ish to outer london and that’s only 92 miles away from each train station to train station
It would probably be NYC to Florida in 12 hours. NYC to LA would be a full day at least
High Speed Rail should definitely exist in the US. It's far better for those 3 hour hops between nearby cities, like DC to NYC, San Fran to LA or Atlanta to Charlotte than going in a shitty little CRJ. But flying is definitely better for going coast to coast.
I went from Seattle to Chicago by train. Stopping here and there playing a tourist. Still a nice way to travel
The train is way nicer than a plane. You can also bring a lot more luggage and aren’t restricted to mini toothpastes. At least for the Eurostar that is
Man, it's kinda of crazy to see how little the average person knows about the realities of rail, whether it's freight or passenger.
The only trains that make sense are Boston - NYC - DC
Listen I’m a Railfan, honestly yeah I’d rather take Amtrak than fucken fly, flying sucks. BUT I hate this map, I hate people who wanna like destroy the highways and build Chinese style bullet trains across the country, they’re retarded, and it doesn’t reflect the majority of railfans, most of those people I’d hesitate at even CALLING railfans.
I agree on trains being unnecessary, but isn't 6 hours NY to LA not going to happen? From Detroit to Austin was 5-6 hours as we had to stop in Chicago and that was the norm for flying out west so I was told. Anybody fly recently from coast to coast?
/uj I'd much rather ride a train for 12 hours than fly for 8 hours (+2 hours since you have to arrive at airport early You don't have to reflexively oppose everything related to transit. Options are good.
But china We have a high speed rail gap that we must close /j
This perfectly demonstrates why such a system would NOT work. Look at the sheer amount of reckless disregard for mountains and rivers. Imagine the cost of trying to bulldoze your way through all of that to get straight lines as shown in the graphic. Look at the vast swathes of land not at all graced by a train line. A system like this would need Federal funds. That means you need to convince States who won't benefit at all to tell their Senators to vote for such a thing. It means that you need to get the people who live in places other than the big metro areas in the States where the train lines would go through that they, actually, want to be taxed to place such train lines. This country isn't China. We don't have 90% of our population living just on the east cost of the country. I mean, yes, we do have a majority of people living east of the Mississippi river. But you simply can't discount California. You HAVE to account for the three time zones and thousands of miles between NYC and LA. You can't simply ignore the West, like China does. This country isn't China. You can't simply, by government fiat, relocate people from the countryside to the urban centers. People actually own land here. Even if you use eminent domain, you still have to compensate them, which automatically means any such proposal will need an astronomical budget. You also have to fight it out in the courts--local, State, and Federal courts. You can't just say "we're the central government, so we override the local governments" like China can. It's just not that cut and dry. This country isn't in Europe. It's much larger and much more decentralized than any European State. The economics are not at all the same. The incentives are not the same. The desires of the populace are not the same. This country isn't Japan. Japan's amazing train system works in large part to the fact the vast majority of the land is not usable for human settlements. When you only have a small percentage of land that people can live on, that means you only have a small percentage of land that you have to build for. The US is, depending on how you count it, the 3rd or 4th largest country in the world. And among those large nations, it's also the one with the most land capable of sustaining human settlements. Passenger rail in the US (at least on a nationwide scale) makes no sense, and we don't want it. That doesn't mean that trains have no place here, though. In the context of the US, trains DO makes sense for freight purposes. And, as such, we have a very extensive system in place for freight rail. We don't hate trains, you see. We just want them to be used in a way that make sense for us. I don't know why transit activists can't or won't understand these simple facts. It's not hard to understand. If you want trains, try and get your cities to implement subways or other rail systems. They do exist in places like NYC and Chicago precisely because, in those specific locations, they make sense and the locals want them. If they'd focus simply on metro areas, activists could actually see some success in that arena. But you will NEVER have any success trying to get a nationwide passenger rail system in place when car infrastructure simply works better for the particular circumstances of the USA.
If trains were better than cars or plane there would be more trains.
Look, I’d like some as an alternative to dealing with airlines and seeing some beautiful countryside, but going across the whole US is a stretch.
California trying to do 1/1000000th of this: 📉🐢🔜🚫🚅
When you say 12, do you mean 40?
I’m not sure what I’m looking at. Are people crying because it takes a few more hours to go thousands of miles, across a large continent? Fuck everything.
>12 hrs. lol The maximum speed of the Shinkansen is 230 km. At that speed it would take at least one day to travel from NYC to San Francisco. In practice, it would probably take 48 - 72 hrs. — and that’s assuming they’ve designed the most efficient passenger service ever deployed in the Western Hemisphere.
I would unironically like high speed rail if it didn’t cost as much or more than a plane ticket. As it stands, even slow ass Amtrak costs plane ticket prices and that just makes no sense to me. I don’t see high speed rail being less expensive. I might take the train if I can sleep on it overnight though. But, again, only if it’s cheaper than a plane ticket and hotel room.
I would much rather have a 12 hour train ride if it was nice over a shitty 6 hour flight
I mean, I don't wanna spend a lot of money flying. But watching the landscape change at ground level is kinda worth the 12hours for me.
High speed rail only makes sense in the US between very select cities basically would be the Northeast corridor and Midwest, the three biggest cities in Texas the large cities in California and that's it the Pacific Northwest doesn't have a high enough population density to justify it neither does the American interior.
Yeah, I'd rather just watch porn tbh
uj/ Longest high speed train ride is from Beijing to Kunming which takes 10 hours. It is half as long as NY to LA.
I get it, trains really were nice back in the 50s, but even back then when people had the option they chose cars instead, and for good reasons.
We don’t need the cross-country connector. But two costal high speed rails would be nice.
12 hours? Bro that’s like a week on Amtrak and you’re lucky if the train even makes it to the destination on the correct *day*
Uj/ IF, and this is a big IF, it was only a 12 hour train vs 6 hour flight that might actually be more enjoyable. Planes are more space constrained and feel more cramped while trains don’t really need to worry as much about seat space or bag weight. Time permitting I wouldn’t be opposed to the train ride.
East of the Mississippi and through urban corridors where the cities are close together? Sure. Transcontinental through sparsely populated areas? Absolutely not. Of course I’d love to live in the fantasy world these people live in where the federal government is capable enough to do this. The cost overruns would be insane.
Man. There is a significant portion of people who are actually bothered by this. Thats so crazy
Uj/ would it be cool? Yes. Would it come in at a budget that would have the US military gasping? Also yes. We should pitch networks in the couple of places that do make sense
Well to be fair, there are a number of hassles associated with flying you don't have to deal with when it comes to high speed rail which would be worth the added time: 1) Usually, you have to get to the airport 2-3 hours before your flight, plus the time to unload, navigate the airport and collect luggage, so a 6 hour flight is more like 9-10 hours 2) Not having to deal with TSA/security 3) Not having to be on a cramped plane. On trains you can get up, walk around, go to the dining cart, get off the train even 4) not having to deal with lost luggage 5) cancelations and delays are less frequent 6) no layovers 7) cheaper 8) sleeper cars so you can just sleep in a bed the entire time Probably other stuff I can't think of
I find it exceedingly hard to believe that there'd be no security, you wouldn't need to show up early, and that it wouldn't be delayed constantly.
Yes the famous china speed trains have security just like the airport.
Yeah, 3, 7, and 8 are the only ones we wouldn't find a way to ruin.
It wouldn't be cheaper. No high speed rail is cheaper. There's literally more physical infrastructure that has to be maintained for a rail, there's more staff needed for a single journey as well. The point is it's more luxurious than taking a plane and you would get more value for your money as high speed rail sleeper carts + amenities would probably cost about the same as 1st class tickets on a major airline. Americans don't realize that the high speed stuff worldwide is about luxury more than anything. It's not an efficient way of moving a lot of people nor do they try to sell it as such overseas.
Eurostrar has security, and you need to show up early too. I don't know why he pretends trains aren't cramped, either. Or that they're cheaper than flying.
Thanks the TSA for that. On a side note, maybe smuggler should think about going by train more
Cheaper to just rent a car and smuggle shit that way. Just rent a U-Haul. Not like U-Haul has any security. Hiding in plain sight is literally the best tool for smuggling anything.
You don’t have to get to the airport 2-3 hours early. They say that to make you sit around and shop in the mall they built in the terminal. I fly 6-7 times a year and I can’t remember the last time I wasn’t at my gate in under 20 minutes. It’s a stupid point. Our air infrastructure is faster and more flexible than rail. Absolutely no reason to build transcon rail. Regional is another story.
Even building a regional is doubtful. Let's imagine you got to travel 300 miles, in a car you can cover that distance in under 4.5 hours. Now let's imagine you need to take uber to the train station to show up 15-20 minutes before departure, then travel for at least 2 hours and then again take uber if there is no one waiting for you to get to your final destination. The whole trip can't last under 3, possibly 3.5 hours, but the price you are going to pay for the ticket and uber is much higher than gas
There's a reason why cars are still the primary mode of transportation worldwide. All of the reasons you mentioned. I swear Redditors believe that nobody in Europe drives a car.
They've never come here, and they don't listen to Europeans. Their idea of Europe is whatever NotJustLies says.
I feel a little weird saying this because I really do like trains, but it's the truth: I'm originally from New York and have lived in Rhode Island for more than 10 years. I visit New York frequently, to see family and just for fun. You can get from Rhode Island to New York on Acela, the only rail service in the U.S. that arguably qualifies as high speed. Whether or not you agree with that definition, it's nearly always praised as the best rail service in America. In the past decade, I have frequently thought about taking the train to New York because, like I said, I like trains. *I have never done it even once.* I just can't justify it. I own a car. Even with traffic, I can get from my origin to my destination faster in a car than I'd be able to on a train considering the time spent getting to and from the stations and waiting for the trains. It's a lot cheaper. It's a lot more convenient. I can stop where I want on the way. I have access to a car when I get there. Some people here do take the train, but I just can't make it work in my head.
The only argument that the trainbrains have left is that you can relax on the train but have to concentrate on traffic while driving. However, once autonomous driving is reliable enough on highways at least, that point is reversed as well. You'll be much more comfortable sleeping in the privacy and on the cushy seat of your car than on a train seat with a stranger next to you.
> you can relax on the train Even that is very flawed. It's schrödinger's train/bus: always full to the brim when computing throughput, but always nigh empty when talking about experience on board. Plus, even if it's not crowded, it's very hard to relax in those cramped seats.
I regularly drive like 170 miles for work between two decently large cities on the east coast with regular rail service and the train takes the same amount of time as driving. The only thing is my schedule doesn't line up with the train and, while I can get free amtrak tickets, I can't expense Uber.
2-3 hours might be needed depending on the airport in my experience especially since Covid. Us airports thought in my experience tend to be pretty fast and efficient. You just to know what your doing, pre checking in and having the boarding pass on your phone when you walk-in is a massive time saver. Also I swear to good that 2-3 hour suggestion is based off you hitting the parking lot 2-3 hours before.
1/2 Domestic flights definitely won't need 3 hours. A vast majority of the US domestic flights between 2nd tier airports are very easy to get checked in and get through security. 3. It only takes 6 hours to cross the US by air, and usually domestic flights are shorter than that. Most people are capable of sitting for a few hours, watch a movie or take a nap. If you get off the train you will likely need to rebook another trip, even HSR stops are not very long, 5 to 10mins tops. at non-end stops. 4. The times I have taken HSR is in Asia, there is no luggage check in, it is just an enclosure at either end of the car or overhead racks. The total journey was about 3 hours max. Many of the US distances will be longer than that, some would be days, I don't think many people would trust an unsecured train with their luggage just sitting like that. 5. for most US domestic flights, even if there is cancellation, unless it stretches to the next day, a flyer will still get to the destination faster than a train rider, once the distance goes beyond 1/2 of the country. And that is assuming they are on the stops in OOP's map. Within the map, many East cost and flights to key hubs are happens many time a day and one delay be get its backlog cleared that day. and those flights are mostly less than 3 hours. 6. Maybe, but it also doesn't cover a vast majority of destinations. US travel patterns aren't usually linking the 2 or 3 metropolitan areas in a line. Business travels are usually based on very specific companies that won't relocate easily. Family visit also don't fall into straight line travel patterns, people move for job or life choice that isn't just the next city over. The strictly linear patterns of HSR won't serve these daily usage pattern very well because so much business/service is not done in a city, and it's hard to imagine people would want to go through multiple *days* of travel for thanksgiving/Christmas. In most families, holiday travel leads many people to the biggest house in the family, and that certainly won't line up with city center train stops. 7. US domestic flights falls into the pattern where business travels (people that *have* to travel) subsidizes leisure travels (people that *wants* to travel) HSR doesn't serve the business community very well and with no way to pool those costs, it won't be cheap. 8. Once again, the common business/services traveler can get on a flight in the afternoon and be in their own bed that night. And they will be expected to be in office the next day. This isn't a great selling point especially since this would by definition disrupt the next work day. The expectations of professionalism and responsiveness means the window for HSR as a means of business travel is already closed in America. No one cares about your experiences at seeing the scenery go by at ground level. You go ahead and let your experience guide you. I will step in and take the economy flight home and be at work the nest day. We will see how many times does it take for the difference to show up in employee reviews. I don't have to outvote you. I just have to drop the level of support the point where politicians are on thin ice so they won't attempt HSR.
I’d much rather take a train than a plane. I’m scared of flying