[HN Gopher] Amtrak's 2035 map has people talking about the futur...
___________________________________________________________________
Amtrak's 2035 map has people talking about the future of U.S. train
travel
Author : Tomte
Score : 246 points
Date : 2021-04-25 11:59 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.npr.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.npr.org)
| crazypython wrote:
| I hope Amtrak is capable of using these funds in a non-corrupt
| way.
| richwater wrote:
| Train travel in the US is just too inefficient compared to
| aviation. It will never be competitive for cross-country travel.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| (BTW can anyone tell me how to use markdown in HN?)
|
| I read through part of the discussion but can someone enlightens
| me does it make sense to build high speed railway in the States?
| Every piece of reply tells me that cost is going to be
| prohibitive and it's not going to be faster than taking
| airplanes.
|
| Back in China it does make a lot more sense to have trains
| connecting each city, because:
|
| - Each city, even the 3rd and 4th tier ones have a lot of people
| and they move around to get jobs and others.
|
| - Average car owned by family is still low even for first tier
| cities.
|
| - It's common for airplanes to be late
|
| But I don't really see these kinds of things for the States.
| schoen wrote:
| > (BTW can anyone tell me how to use markdown in HN?)
|
| It's mostly not supported. The only formatting I know of is
| asterisks for _italics_ , and leading spaces for
| fixed-width quotes.
| marcusverus wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc
| ggreer wrote:
| This proposal seems totally disconnected from reality.
|
| First, Amtrak is not a competitive transportation option. It can
| be a fun novelty, but it's expensive and slow. Going from
| Portland to Oakland is supposed to take 18 hours but actually
| took 20 when I rode it. The same trip in a car takes 10 hours. By
| plane is 90 minutes. It gets worse: Amtrak cost me more than a
| plane ticket to the same destination.
|
| Second, hundreds of billions of dollars doesn't get you much
| train in the US. California tried to build a high speed rail
| route between SF and LA. The estimated completion cost has
| skyrocketed to $100 billion and the completion date is 25 years
| after voters approved the project. The state has since given up
| on connecting LA & SF by high speed rail.
|
| There is simply no future in which passenger rail competes with
| air travel in the US. Even in circumstances where the distances
| are not too great, and the political and bureaucratic hurdles
| are.
| regextegrity wrote:
| The job of government is to provide services for it's people,
| it doesn't have to be competitive, just useful.
| Dopameaner wrote:
| Tbh, AMTRAK needs to find its target audience. Right now, work
| transportation has been a huge thorn for everyone involved. It
| would be such a boon to commute living from LA to sf for work.
| jlarocco wrote:
| The irony is that some parts of the United States had great
| rail connections in the past, and they were torn up to make way
| for roads.
|
| The front range of Colorado, for example, had trains everywhere
| in the late 1800s. It was _the_ way to get between Denver,
| Colorado Springs, Pueblo, Boulder, Golden, and other cities on
| the front range.
|
| Now they're trying to build a rail link between Denver and
| Boulder, and it's costing a fortune and running into all kinds
| of NIMBYism and bureaucracy.
|
| I'd love to see it, but the way it's going I'm skeptical it
| will ever beat out the RTD buses.
| adventured wrote:
| > Second, hundreds of billions of dollars doesn't get you much
| train in the US. California tried to build a high speed rail
| route between SF and LA.
|
| It does, just not in hyper regressive California.
|
| You could build a full high-speed rail network between Dallas,
| Houston, Austin and San Antonio for $100-$150 billion.
|
| You just can't build much of anything in California, period,
| that's the issue. It's a collapsing state in most metrics that
| matter for quality of life (and has been for a long time), even
| the venture capitalists can't abandon the state fast enough. As
| their capital flees, so goes what remains of California (tech).
| As taxes go far higher this decade, the flight will get worse,
| Texas and Florida will keep extracting immense value out of
| California and New York.
| brudgers wrote:
| At the scale of the US, passenger rail is disconnected from
| geography. Look at the map and locate Salt Lake City. It sits
| in the endorheic watershed known as the Great Basin. It is the
| only metro area of more than a million people in the Basin. The
| Great Basin is about the size of France.
|
| From Salt Lake City heading west the first metro of more than
| one million is Sacramento a thousand kilometers away. In
| between is nothing but mountain ranges running north south. The
| little ones only nerds and locals can name. The big one, the
| Sierra Nevada, which most Americans will vaguely allude to as
| "the Rockies." Despite the Rockies being five hundred
| kilometers to the east of Salt Lake City.
|
| Even further on the other side of the Rockies sits Denver 800
| km away. It's the closest million plus metro to the east of
| Salt Lake. Again across north south mountain ranges.
|
| That's 1800 km of mountain traversing rail line that only
| serves Salt Lake City. And it's still almost that far - 1600 km
| - to Chicago...and a mere 1200 km to New York City.
|
| The US is vast. Europeans don't have practical rail from
| Helsinki to Athens. Or Berlin to Baku. Both significantly
| shorter than NYC to San Francisco.
| nerdponx wrote:
| This only applies from the Midwest to the West Coast. There's
| no geographical reason the Northeast (and parts of the South)
| should not be densely connected with intercity rail.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| The OP just gave an example of Portland to Oakland which
| took 20 hours. That's still mid-north pacific.
| brudgers wrote:
| I agree in theory. In practice, national rail has to pass
| the Senate where Wyoming, Alaska, Montana, Hawaii, and the
| Dakotas are twelve percent of the votes. Throw in all the
| places you are leaving out and you're close to half the of
| it.
|
| National passenger rail isn't politically viable in the US
| because passenger rail is an absurd approach in most of the
| US.
|
| The west and the midwest are most of the US.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| But if you're connecting east and west, you _will_ need to
| cross the Rockies. Why not do it through a city of a million?
| nerdponx wrote:
| Rail travel shouldn't compete with air travel. It should be a
| fast, comfortable alternative to intercity car and bus travel
| between major destinations.
|
| This model already works well along the Northeast corridor.
| Even the slow, delay-ridden Empire Service (thank CSX for that)
| ran full trains between New York and Albany(before Covid). Not
| to mention the main DC to Boston route.
|
| The failure of intercity rail does not seem all that distinct
| from the general failure to invest in infrastructure in the US,
| and the enormous costs when the investment is attempted.
| chrononaut wrote:
| > Rail travel shouldn't compete with air travel ... This
| model already works well along the Northeast corridor.
|
| Except the NEC is heavily competing against existing air
| travel between its common destinations. Or are you generally
| referring to longer distance air travel? (i.e., 2+ hours by
| plane?)
| tupshin wrote:
| The Northeast corridor is a strong counter argument.
| bradleyjg wrote:
| I've taken the Acela from NYC to DC and back many times, and
| it is quite nice. But a big advantage it gets is how much of
| a pain it is to reach area airports in both cities. If intra-
| regional mass transit was improved that would paradoxically
| hurt the competitiveness of inter-regional rail.
| cromwellian wrote:
| Even if getting to the airport is convenient, you still
| need to arrive 1 hour before your flight, and deal with
| security, boarding procedures, taxi, air traffic control,
| etc on both sides.
|
| In Japan, I can literally show up for a Shinkansen five
| minutes before departure and hop right on.
|
| Airports for short range traffic are fscking awful.
| ghaff wrote:
| Reagan in DC is convenient to the metro (Dulles of course
| is not) but all of NYC's airports are a pain.
| GongOfFour wrote:
| Much of the Northeast Regionals route is effectively a
| functioning megapolis. You are not going to find anywhere
| close to similar conditions anywhere else in the United
| States.
| jzoch wrote:
| It functions that way because it has a functioning rail
| line? Or at least semi-functional. YOu are right you won't
| find those conditions anywhere else in the US but that is
| our own fault
| ghaff wrote:
| I'm not sure how true that is even though Amtrak is one
| mover of people. One of the reasons I for one tend to
| take Amtrak is that Boston area into Manhattan is mostly
| a pretty awful drive and it isn't because there are so
| few vehicles on the road. Also, pre-Acela business
| travelers mostly flew (and many still do) on the northern
| section of the corridor. And, even today, most business
| travelers aren't going to take the train from Boston to
| DC.
|
| So it seems pretty probable to me that Acela came about
| because there was already a huge and increasing demand
| for such a service.
| marcianx wrote:
| NYC to Montreal (~370mi) takes ~8 hours by bus and 11 hours
| by train, though granted, times at Customs is more variable
| for the bus than for the train. I'm often surprised at how
| much the train shakes side to side on the occasions it's
| going "fast".
|
| Contrast that to the TGV in France, which zooms around at
| 200mph and covered one of my trips between Paris and Avignon
| (~430mi) in ~2.75hrs about a decade ago. US train
| infrastructure feels extremely behind in comparison. Perhaps
| it's because of a greater emphasis on highway travel.
| matmatmatmat wrote:
| To be fair, that leg of the TGV happens to be some of the
| best track in the whole system. It's practically a
| straight, non-stop shot from Paris to Avignon on double
| decker cars with panoramic windows.
| jcranmer wrote:
| NYC to Montreal is not part of the NEC; the NEC is solely
| the portion from DC to Boston.
|
| That said, the NYC-Montreal and Boston-Toronto lines are
| lines that absolutely should be dedicated high-speed
| passenger rail in addition to the NEC, but they are not
| even dedicated passenger rail lines at the moment let alone
| proper 220mph HSR lines.
| sacredcows wrote:
| To top it all off, Toronto-NY is one of the busiest air
| routes in the world, by number of scheduled flights.
| JJMcJ wrote:
| > how much the train shakes
|
| Roadbeds are maintained to freight train standards, e.g.,
| the difference in height of the two rails.
|
| Amtrak depends on the "host railroads" who are not very
| hospitable to passenger traffic.
| schoen wrote:
| It's strange to see the contrast between how relatively large
| a share of transportation Amtrak has in the Northeast
| Corridor compared to elsewhere in the country. I've heard
| this ascribed to population density, but it doesn't seem like
| trains are as popular in places like Texas or Southern
| California.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Huge advantage of amtrak is that the stations are in prime
| locations. In the northeast that's a huge advantage as
| going from train to destination might be a 15 minute walk.
| Meanwhile airport to destination could be an hour drive.
| Sunbelt cities have no density, so the trains location
| isn't as valuable.
| blabitty wrote:
| Development and land use patterns are way different in the
| Sunbelt. There are lines that go through most downtowns but
| most of the people live far from the stations. The
| passenger trains also share lines with freight and freight
| is prioritized, a trip from Austin to Dallas by Amtrak
| takes 6 hours but can be driven in 3 or so.
| ghaff wrote:
| Lots of people in the Northeast don't live in downtowns
| either. One big difference if that, if you're taking a
| trip to one of the big cities, you often don't need or
| even want a car when you get there. On the other hand, if
| you can drive somewhere in 4-5 hours, taking a train and
| then having to rent a car when you arrive seems a lot
| less attractive.
| benatkin wrote:
| It could exist without the rest of the network, and probably
| be cheaper. Why is NJ Transit so much cheaper to go from
| Philly (via Trenton) to NYC? I think the Northeast Corridor
| might be subsidizing other parts of Amtrak.
| simfree wrote:
| Yes, the Northeast Corridor is the only profitable part of
| Amtrak, that is why Amtrak tried to cut as much service as
| possible outside the Northeast Corridor prior to Joe Biden
| taking office.
| ghaff wrote:
| Yep. Basically the Northeast Corridor is a pretty
| profitable route. In part, this is because the Acela is
| basically priced as high as it can be while remaining
| competitive with air. Business travelers generally pay it
| because it's a bit more comfortable, a bit faster, and
| there are fewer plebes than the non-Acela option. Oh, and
| it's not their money. (And it _is_ competitive with air
| depending upon your preferences.)
|
| To be honest, when it's my own money I usually just take
| the regular regional train. It's about half the price and
| because it can piggyback off the electrification done for
| Acela, it takes less than an hour more.
| benatkin wrote:
| Agree. It's 30 more minutes to read or something and 30
| less minutes at my destination.
|
| On other routes being slow is a massive liability though.
| If people could get from San Francisco to Portland in 10
| hours, or even 12 hours, instead of 18 hours, it would be
| much more practical. At 18 hours it messes up your sleep
| schedule rather than just giving you more time to read.
|
| It might just not be worth it to spend more on rail
| travel from Portland to SF though. It's just a reality of
| geography rather than somebody's mistake that travel from
| SF to Portland is harder than travel from DC to NYC.
| yummypaint wrote:
| Most of the delays and lack of consistency come from the rail
| lines being controlled by other interests. Amtrak is always
| lowest on the priority totem pole, and is routinely forced to
| yield to freight lines for hours at a time arbitrarily and
| without notice.
|
| Lack of high speed rail is an orthogonal issue, and is
| constantly conflated with fixing the current state of affairs.
| we don't even have standard passenger rail yet! We need to
| build more cheap track to connect areas first.
|
| Rail travel is far more efficient than flying, both
| environmentally and economically. Flying is heavily subsidized
| in ways that rail is not, and that tends to hide the
| externalities.
|
| Rail has also been set up to fail with metrics like direct
| profitability, which is entirely not the point of public
| transportation. It's like claiming the entire value of a road
| is the toll money it generates.
| brudgers wrote:
| Buses make more sense than passenger rail. More flexible
| routing. More flexible time tables. Utilize existing
| infrastructure. Dedicated right of way easier to create by
| reconfiguration of existing roads.
|
| When the Colorado Plateau snows in - as it does about every
| winter - a bus to LA can simply detour south toward Phoenix.
| JJMcJ wrote:
| > yield to freight lines
|
| Which is exactly the reverse of the old days when freight
| waited.
|
| Also many host railroads only maintain some sections of
| roadbeds to freight standards, so passenger trains must slow
| to freight speeds.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| Also level crossings and equipment breakdowns. Collisions
| between cars and trains are not uncommon. In my first and
| last Amtrak trip, I rode from Chicago to Las Vegas and was
| nearly 24 hours late on arrival, due to delays from freight
| traffic, hitting a car at a crossing, and having a locomotive
| break down. And my luggage was delayed for another day after
| that.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Collisions between cars and trains are not uncommon
|
| https://www.bts.gov/content/train-fatalities-injuries-and-
| ac...
|
| 91 rail collisions (not just with cars, but of all types)
| for trains (not just passenger trains) in 2020 nationally.
|
| That's...pretty rare.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| Agreed, I'm surprised. I guess because I experienced it,
| I assumed it was rather more common.
| closeparen wrote:
| I don't think the "economically" part of this statement is at
| all obvious. Train sets are cheaper than passenger planes but
| they have to be tied up a lot longer to provide the same
| passenger-miles. Acquiring land and laying track costs what
| it actually costs in the US and not what it would it would
| theoretically cost under foreign labor, regulatory, and
| property-rights conditions.
| syshum wrote:
| Taxpayer money goes to fund the Airline industry in a wide
| number of ways, just a few would be that fact that most
| airports are government run, many operating at net loss
| when proper accounting is used. We also subsidize security
| (tsa), traffic control (faa), and do not get me started on
| the billions and billions in bailouts the airlines get with
| every economic down turn.
|
| So to say the economic part is not obvious one has to be
| willfully ignorant of government spending, just listing the
| obvious source of government subsidy there are many other
| less obvious one including special tax exemptions, and many
| other programs that have indirect benefits to the industry
| closeparen wrote:
| This report [0] suggests significantly higher passenger-
| mile costs in both fares and subsidies for Amtrak vs. air
| travel. It looks pretty off the cuff, I'm sure you could
| dispute the methodology, but... let's see yours.
|
| [0] https://urbanreforminstitute.org/2019/09/transport-
| costs-and...
| enriquec wrote:
| And rail would literally not exist without way more
| government intervention (eminent domain), subsidies, and
| bailouts. On the eve of self driving it is actually
| obvious that rail is economically inferior by several
| orders of magnitude.
| m463 wrote:
| > Amtrak is always lowest on the priority totem pole
|
| It's unfortunate, but this is probably the way it should be.
|
| Economically the repeat customer should probably get the
| benefits of predictability / stability.
|
| Also, passenger commuter lines do stick closer to schedule
| than long-distance trains.
|
| When I've traveled amtrak, the first time I was surprised to
| have such unpredictable times, but after that I just factored
| it in. Most long-distance amtrak travel is for the scenery
| and the pace, not for private-jet-efficiency.
| bpye wrote:
| Amtrak is already competitive in certain regions. The northeast
| is the most obvious, but the train is my preferred mode of
| travel between Vancouver, BC and Seattle, WA. Whilst a flight
| is quicker, in the air, door to door is no faster. Driving
| generally would be quicker but I do try to be concious of the
| carbon impact of my travel choices.
|
| The primary issue I have is that the hours the service runs,
| the first departure is a little too late to arrive for a
| morning meeting, and the latest is a little too early to leave
| the office after 5 - an earlier and later option would make it
| very viable for one day business travel.
|
| Whilst the US population is generally much less dense than much
| of Europe, there are large areas (PNW, the northeast, much of
| California) that definitely have high enough population density
| to support an extensive rail network. Yes there must be
| political will to make these improvements, but surely that is
| true of _all_ infrastructure spending?
| ghaff wrote:
| Even on the Northeast Corridor the morning meeting thing is
| real from Boston to NY. You really need to go down the night
| before. Which I'm generally fine with. Have a nice meal, etc.
| But when I can't I'll end up flying (or driving) in the
| morning.
| masklinn wrote:
| > Even in circumstances where the distances are not too great,
| and the political and bureaucratic hurdles are.
|
| NIMBY-ism as well? Because I can't fathom how a 400 miles high-
| speed rail route can cost $100bn unless you're spending years
| re-drafting your route because every asshole on the way has to
| be heard.
|
| 25 years is not completely nonsensical though, if you want to
| do this right it does take time.
|
| For a fairly recent example, the french LGV Est is 252 miles
| (406km), it cost 4bn (including 800 millions worth of rolling
| stock), and took 16 years before the construction and financing
| protocol of the first phase was signed and the opening of the
| second phase. First phase opened a year late, and second phase
| 3 months late because of the Eckwersheim testing accident
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eckwersheim_derailment).
|
| Obviously building in California would require additional
| studies and expenses for earthquake safety and the like, but
| 12x... seems a bit much.
|
| The cost only makes sense if it's basically all tunnels and
| briges, like Chuo Shinkansen: that's estimated to cost north of
| $90 billion for 177 miles, but it's going straight through
| mountains, 90% of the way is through tunnels.
| drawkbox wrote:
| The longer we wait to do rail right the more expensive it
| gets because of NIMBY-ism and property ownership. We need to
| do it now.
|
| Trains are slower in some cases, but the views you simply
| cannot get from a plane or car.
|
| You can work on a train.
|
| You can get a private cab.
|
| You can get up and move around.
|
| You can go to the viewing car and see the beauty of America.
|
| You can't do any of that in a plane or car. It is traveling
| in a much better way, even if longer.
|
| Take the Southwest Chief from Flagstaff to Colorado routes
| and you'd be amazed at how pretty New Mexico is, the deserts
| of Arizona and the mountains in Colorado. Take any of the
| coastal lines. You will simply be blown away.
|
| The great thing about trains or infrastructure like fiber
| across America maybe, people will see govt/business in
| action. It will build platforms of market value that people
| can see, people in small towns, people all around.
|
| People need visuals just like clients need visuals to see
| progress, even though lots of the work is not visible maybe
| in code or other areas.
|
| The time to train is now. In a way it is the last chance to
| really get it going before everything is full.
|
| We have been robbed of amazing train rides and views. Take
| any of these routes/lines and tell me you don't enjoy the
| views. [1]
|
| Before you vote on anything related to trains, go take one on
| our underfunded Amtrak routes. It will change your mind if
| you are not for it. Imagine if we did this right.
|
| Trains use much less fuel, help make pricing for cars/planes
| competitive and more. Having a third major transportation
| option besides a bus is needed as we get more packed in.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Amtrak_routes
| nradov wrote:
| The view from a train might be marginally nicer, but when I
| travel it's usually because I want to be somewhere else.
| Not because I want to sit for hours and watch the scenery
| go by.
| BotanyIsFun wrote:
| You're so boring.
| cromwellian wrote:
| But do you want to spend 1hr getting to the airport, then
| waiting 2+ Hours to board the plane, wait for air traffic
| control, taxi, etc and then repeat on the other side? It
| takes five to six hours to go from SF to LA about the
| same as it takes to drive. A train would be far better.
| jdkee wrote:
| Driverless electric vehicles will decimate public
| transportation.
| brudgers wrote:
| A bus route can do all that and more. A car is even more
| flexible because you can stop, get out, and become part of
| the landscape.
| pc86 wrote:
| How is property ownership standing in the way of US rail?
| missedthecue wrote:
| Railroads (particularly high speed) need to be long and
| straight. What happens if people don't want a dozen
| trains roaring through their neighborhood every day? It's
| difficult to just go around it.
|
| What happens if people don't want a railroad through
| their property at all? After all, once a railroad is
| sitting on your land, it's difficult to repurpose it for
| much else. The state can try eminent domain, but that
| takes time and lengthy court cases, and the costs add up
| quick.
| brudgers wrote:
| The best routes already have railroads. Their right of
| ways are in private hands.
|
| To put it in perspective, the only all season
| transcontinental route is the southern most line on the
| article's map. It only exists by virtue of the Gadsden
| Purchase in 1854. The right of way is controlled by the
| corporate successors of the Southern Pacific.
|
| The non-existence of viable alternative all season grades
| across the west is why the Gadsden Purchase happened. The
| US had assumed surely such routes existed in Alta
| California following its succession in 1848 via the
| treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.
| treis wrote:
| >Because I can't fathom how a 400 miles high-speed rail route
| can cost $100bn unless you're spending years re-drafting your
| route because every asshole on the way has to be heard.
|
| That's exactly what happens. Not because of NIMBYism but
| because it's run by consultants on cost plus, T&M, or
| percentage contracts. They have no incentive to finish the
| project. And in fact are financially rewarded for making the
| project more expensive.
| sbierwagen wrote:
| >I can't fathom how a 400 miles high-speed rail route can
| cost $100bn
|
| In the Seattle metro area, about 100 miles of low-speed light
| rail has cost $75.5 billion so far. Building infrastructure
| in the US is just inherently more expensive than in other
| countries. It is a political problem, and unfortunately, only
| has political solutions.
| brudgers wrote:
| US rail is private. French rail is national. The French
| system can use existing right of way without having to
| acquire right of way.
| gwbrooks wrote:
| Amtrak receives well more than $1 billion a year in federal
| subsidies and still loses millions of dollars per year. It
| is private only in the broadest sense of the word.
| hakfoo wrote:
| Amtrak doesn't own most of its rails. They have to
| negotiate with, e. g. BNSF and Union Pacific to use their
| tracks in most of the country. This often has led to
| limits on services and schedules, because they don't want
| to repackage their profitable freight offerings, or
| upgrade trackage sufficient for 100kph freight trains but
| not 200kph+ modern passenger ones.
| brudgers wrote:
| Amtrak doesn't own much right of way.[1] Only about 700
| miles. There are about 140,000 miles of track in the US.
| Nearly all of it in private hands.
|
| In France, the railroads are nationalized. A new high
| speed line doesn't incur the similar costs for right of
| way acquisitions.
|
| [1]: http://blog.amtrak.com/2019/05/why-are-amtrak-
| trains-delayed...
| mbreese wrote:
| But the point above is that it doesn't get any of the
| "benefits" of being public, even if it is a de-facto
| public entity.
| aylmao wrote:
| A detail worth mentioning: Chuo Shinkansen is maglev line,
| which are more expensive than high-speed rail too.
| Fern_Blossom wrote:
| You fail to understand construction reality.
|
| The LGV route is a far more open and "flatter" (relatively
| speaking) than LA to SF. There's way less for them to tunnel
| or grade, which gets expensive quickly. HSR requires more
| gentle changes in direction than traditional rail. Building
| on flat, open terrain that no one is using is great... but
| that kind of terrain is already in use or owned by someone.
| Thus, easements or having to outright purchase the land. If
| not and you go for cheap land, it's going to come with
| downsides, like being mountainous.
|
| At that, France sees less than 10 earthquake events over 2
| magnitude a year on average. In the past week, there were
| already 6 events over 2 magnitude between LA and SF alone:
| https://www.cisn.org/map/index.html An LA to SF line is
| practically on a fault line. Devastating earthquakes are a
| real reality for a Cali line, not so much for France. The
| Cali standards for building rail are going to be higher than
| France, and for EXTREMELY good reason. Thus, price goes up
| for construction.
|
| There's a lot more at play to building these things. What I
| mentioned barely scratches the surface to the complications.
| Claiming NIMBY is pretty naive if you don't take into
| consideration the real world problems and needs to achieving
| something compared to the lofty, idealistic wants of a
| project.
| jcranmer wrote:
| The portion of the CAHSR system being built right now is
| flatter and more open than most of France, and isn't on or
| near any of the major fault lines in California. Its
| outrageous expense has nothing to do with the geographical
| challenges of California (which are real, but not for this
| segment) and everything to do with the incompetence of the
| construction companies and their governmental overseers, as
| well as NIMBYs exacerbating these problems to epic degrees.
| bushbaba wrote:
| Have to wonder if Elon's boring company is the solution. The
| state can say you don't own the ground underneath and just
| tunnel straight from sf to la
| bobthepanda wrote:
| This is not how Western property rights work.
|
| And most of the cost of tunnels is the requirement for
| emergency access and ventilation; the small demonstration
| tunnel in Vegas lacks these features, and so was cheaper.
|
| To compare, the Gotthard Base Tunnel in Switzerland
| requires emergency cross connections every 325m and access
| shafts to the surface. The cross connections are
| perpendicular to the main tunnel and short in length so
| they have to be dug out more or less with workers anyways.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gotthard_Base_Tunnel#/media/F
| i...
| underwater wrote:
| Emergency access isn't necessary for Boring Company
| tunnels. They're so narrow that no one is getting out of
| a vehicle in an emergency in the first place.
| ghaff wrote:
| In which case there will not actually be Boring Company
| tunnels.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| Not just emergency access and ventilation but the
| stations aren't cheap or quick to build either. The
| tunnel itself is almost always the "easy" part.
| masklinn wrote:
| The cost would actually make sense if it were all tunnels.
| Japan's newest Shinkansen route will be 90% tunnels, and
| it's estimated at $90bn for 180 miles. Tunneling is
| expensive as hell.
| Pxtl wrote:
| I wonder if you could lower cost by switching to narrower
| tunnel gauge. Also, if it's all tunnel you could evacuate
| some of the air to lower resistance...
|
| Oh crud Hyperloop finally makes sense to me.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| narrower tunnel gauge either means less capacity or
| comfort, or sometimes both. part of why Concorde was
| retired was because the seats themselves were not
| actually comfortable, and it could not compete with more
| spacious business class on traditional airliners with
| innovations like lie flat beds.
| ghaff wrote:
| I'm not sure the timeframes quite line up. Lie-flat
| seating was coming in when the Concorde was retired
| (after an accident and in the wake of 9/11) but I'm not
| sure how widespread it was.
|
| But, yes, I've been in a Concorde (not flown in one) and
| the seating is, at best, modern domestic--non lie-flat--
| business class.
|
| I actually think this is something that a lot of modern
| supersonic travel fans miss. If you're willing to spend
| the money that supersonic travel _will_ cost you can
| travel very comfortably. And 12-24 hours of time spent
| relaxing comfortably is not actually a problem for most
| people.
| nradov wrote:
| The Boring Company will at best only achieve a small
| reduction in tunneling costs. This wouldn't fix the
| economics of passenger rail in California.
| conception wrote:
| As long as all you want is just a tunnel...
|
| https://www.indy100.com/science-tech/elon-musk-boring-
| compan...
| Pxtl wrote:
| > There is simply no future in which passenger rail competes
| with air travel in the US. Even in circumstances where the
| distances are not too great, and the political and bureaucratic
| hurdles are.
|
| This ignores the existence of climate change. Air travel is not
| sustainable and air travel is least amenable to conversion to
| hydrogen or electric.
|
| As you mention, the chief barriers to HSR in North America are
| political and bureaucratic, not practical. What's missing,
| then, is the political will to do hard things.
|
| Governments used to be able to _do_ things, when the situation
| demanded it.
|
| http://www.thepaincomics.com/weekly080730.htm
| philwelch wrote:
| > This ignores the existence of climate change. Air travel is
| not sustainable and air travel is least amenable to
| conversion to hydrogen or electric.
|
| Which means you'd have to use hydrocarbon fuel. Which can be
| chemically produced from atmospheric CO2 and water if you
| have enough carbon-neutral energy. Or you could sequester an
| offsetting amount of CO2 if that would be more efficient.
| billytetrud wrote:
| Climate change doesn't make trains any better. What we need
| is Skytran: https://www.skytran.com/
| jcranmer wrote:
| How many times will people keep proposing PRT before they
| discover that it doesn't work?
| klausjensen wrote:
| What's PRT?
| ggreer wrote:
| Personal Rapid Transit:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_rapid_transit
| jcranmer wrote:
| PRT is short for Personal Rapid Transit, and it's a form
| of transit that basically combines some sort of fixed-
| guideway-like system with small-capacity individually-
| routable pods instead of trains. As a result, it kind of
| ends up with the worst of both worlds: you have the
| infrastructure complexity (and cost) of a train with the
| throughput (or lack thereof) of single-occupant cars.
|
| (Musk's Loop idea is basically another iteration of the
| PRT concept.)
| javagram wrote:
| Morgantown PRT has 20-person capacity cars. That doesn't
| seem so inefficient. On the other hand, it only operates
| as a PRT during off-peak according to the wiki page -
| during peak hours, it's just a standard scheduled service
| like a train or bus.
|
| That said, the Musk Loop type plans where the cabs/cars
| only carry 1-4 people - which seems similar to this
| SkyTran - is obviously inefficient and not really a
| realistic alternative to cars or mass transit systems.
| JJMcJ wrote:
| > climate change
|
| Also peak oil, a largely forgotten issue. As fuels get more
| expensive, more efficient modes of travel will become cheaper
| relative to air.
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| Fuel shortages are unlikely to be a serious risk for
| centuries. Hydrocarbon reserves are measured in the
| trillions of barrels (in the US alone) and the different
| types are largely fungible at <$100 barrel inasmuch as you
| can convert them all into fuel.
|
| We may greatly reduce hydrocarbon fuel usage but it won't
| be because we ran out in my lifetime.
| philwelch wrote:
| Peak oil is "a largely forgotten issue" because it was a
| largely overblown issue to begin with. Fracking relieved
| the immediate supply pressure while reductions in demand
| will help matters even more.
| brudgers wrote:
| In North America geography is the primary impediment to
| passenger rail of all stripes. High speed rail is even more
| at the mercy of physical reality.
|
| Look at the article's map. That empty distance between San
| Antonio and El Paso is nearly 900km of West Texas emptiness.
| There's Del Rio and Van Horne as the biggest towns and Marfa
| as perhaps the most famous.
|
| When last was San Antonio to El Paso an important trip for
| someone you know?
| throwawayboise wrote:
| Aviation accounts for 2.5% of global CO2 emissions. It's not
| low-hanging fruit.
|
| https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions-from-aviation
| Pxtl wrote:
| I'm not arguing the point. We are far more able to tackle
| ground-vehicle emissions, home heating, and electrical
| generation.
|
| But eventually air travel's time will come, and HSR is the
| only alternative that's on the table.
| philwelch wrote:
| There are also carbon capture and sequestration and
| closed-loop hydrocarbon fuel production using carbon-
| neutral energy sources.
|
| It's completely false, unnecessary, and counterproductive
| to spread FUD about climate change requiring substantial
| reductions in quality of life. People are smart and
| resourceful enough to solve these problems.
| mlinksva wrote:
| Less travel is also on the table. We should do all of the
| above. A hefty carbon tax is the holistic instrument, but
| I'll take any/all paths.
| adrianmonk wrote:
| And trains can't replace transoceanic flights. I don't know
| what percentage, but not all of that 2.5% can be eliminated
| with trains.
| ahelwer wrote:
| A society that takes climate change seriously will
| replace international air travel with passenger ships
| featuring high-speed satellite internet and spacious work
| areas. Little-known fact, ocean travel is 3x more energy-
| efficient than even rail.
| gwbrooks wrote:
| There's no society on earth taking climate change as
| seriously as warranted if the worst projections are to be
| believed.
|
| And there's no precedent for the level of global
| cooperation -- which would have to transcend nation-level
| political realities -- required for meaningful change.
|
| I'm long on humanity. But not because I think we're all
| going to wake up and fix the climate in a coordinated
| manner.
| philwelch wrote:
| I think you'd have better luck with zeppelins.
| ahelwer wrote:
| The trouble with zeppelins is that unloading is
| difficult. Every lb of weight removed from the Zeppelin
| is another lb of lift that has to be offset. So you have
| to do things like pump water into the zeppelin as people
| or cargo disembark. Ships also face this problem to an
| extent (unloaded ships are unstable) but they are sitting
| inside a functionally infinite pool of water they can
| pump in & out.
|
| Zeppelins are tres tres romantique, though.
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| People value their time. There is a reason we replaced
| modes of travel that require days or weeks of travel time
| with modes of travel that only require hours. Society and
| culture has been heavily optimized around the fact that
| it _doesn 't_ take weeks to get to where you are trying
| to go. The world is global and distances are long.
|
| Few people want to be stuck on a passenger ship for weeks
| at a time, their objective is not to be sitting on a
| ship. It would make international travel completely
| infeasible for all but a minority. No one would be able
| to do simple things like visit family if it required a
| month or more of round-trip transit time.
| ahelwer wrote:
| I'm not an idiot, I know why people travel by jet
| aircraft. These luxuries are irrelevant in the face of
| climate change.
|
| Society has been organized around jet travel. It can be
| reorganized around the reality of international travel
| requiring large time investment.
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| These aren't luxuries, business and society is global
| now. Unwinding a century of globalization would
| impoverish many regions of the world. It isn't a mere
| inconvenience, it would be undoing a vast amount of
| economic development and progress. People aren't going to
| be receptive to sacrificing any hope of prosperity for
| them and theirs.
|
| An argument of "but climate change" is tone deaf and not
| very compelling when it is you getting thrown under the
| bus for the Greater Good. Economic realities can't be
| ignored when they are inconvenient.
| ahelwer wrote:
| Unsurprising that someone who, from their bio, "splits
| their time between Seattle and London" is against this
| idea.
|
| The economic effects of climate change will be more
| catastrophic than making it take longer to move
| internationally, something that very very few people
| actually have a need to do.
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| Nice non sequitur and evasion of an inconvenient point. I
| travel internationally because it is necessary, not
| because I particularly want to. Rather more business than
| you may imagine cannot be done remotely. Nonetheless, my
| carbon footprint is significantly lower than the average
| American.
|
| Addressing climate change in anything more than a
| performative way will require massive increases in global
| industrialization, not less. Impactful eco-friendly
| infrastructure isn't going to build itself. Needlessly
| making this slower and more difficult than necessary just
| lends credence to the idea that climate change activists
| aren't serious about addressing the problem.
|
| The promotion of non-serious solutions to climate change
| make it much more difficult to get by in from average
| people for supporting credible and substantive solutions.
| Which isn't helpful if the objective is to constructively
| address climate change.
| squidlogic wrote:
| Society is organized around individuals and groups
| working in mutual self interest. If you go against this
| principle to find your solution you risk backlash to your
| (perceived or real) tyranny.
| ahelwer wrote:
| Society is not organized around individuals and groups
| working in mutual self-interest. Society is organized
| around the interests of the wealthy. Indeed, only people
| who are quite well-off manage to take international
| flights. Immigrants I know are happy if they manage to
| travel back and meet their families once every 3-5 years.
| ancientworldnow wrote:
| The share of warming is higher than the pure emissions
| because of the aerosol effects and resulting heat trapping.
| Some estimates are twice as much.
| TheCoelacanth wrote:
| All sources of CO2 emissions look small when broken down to
| that level of granularity.
| squidlogic wrote:
| From the source cited, here is a breakdown per industry:
|
| https://ourworldindata.org/ghg-emissions-by-sector
|
| Energy usage for industry is 24%
|
| Road travel is 11%
|
| It seems aviation's 2% is not the low hanging fruit.
| SECProto wrote:
| > Aviation accounts for 2.5% of global CO2 emissions. It's
| not low-hanging fruit.
|
| Aviation accounts for 9% [1] of US transportation co2
| emissions (and as they're emitted at high altitude, impact
| is likely more like 13-14%)
|
| [1] https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/fast-facts-
| transportation-...
| m463 wrote:
| I suspect it is a much stronger option to people without cars.
| dreamcompiler wrote:
| That whole western north-south corridor is heavily populated by
| freight trains, and Amtrak trains have to sit on sidings to let
| the freighters go by. As a result, the train spends a lot of
| time not moving. It's one of Amtrak's worst lines, IMO. I did
| Seattle-to-LA once on Amtrak. Never again.
| bpye wrote:
| It's unfortunate - the western north-south corridor has the
| potential to be a very useful transit link. I (pre-covid)
| took the train from Vancouver, BC to Seattle, WA semi-
| regularly as my preferred mode of travel, but there was at
| least one instance I can recall of a multi-hour delay due to
| freight traffic...
| presentation wrote:
| It is depressing to me that entrenched interests make improving
| the US feel impossible. The American Dream is truly dead.
| gpvos wrote:
| It might in a future in which air travel is prohibitively
| highly taxed. Seems unlikely now, but one can dream.
| syshum wrote:
| The the only way to make something "attractive" to the
| population is to place up on its competition prohibitive
| taxation then you have already lost.
|
| Further if that is your "dream" to impose prohibitive
| taxation on the population I would question your ethical
| foundation as well
|
| Edit: for the record since someone below is using a straw-man
| to claim I support subsidies, I dont. I prefer the government
| stay out it completely, neither taxing nor subsidizing (nor
| bailing out) anything, or any industry. I am not Pro or Anti
| Rail, nor I am Pro or Anti Air Travel. I am Anti-Government
| intervention...
| kuschku wrote:
| If you cling to subsidies as the only way your method of
| transportation can continue to work, what does that say
| about you?
|
| (Flights barely break even at all, and that's even with the
| absurd level of subsidies airlines get today)
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Not taxing externalities is a subsidy. We need carbon tax.
| gpvos wrote:
| I'm willing to go quite far to protect the planet.
| jonas21 wrote:
| You're right that the proposal is disconnected from reality --
| but it's not because Amtrak can't be a competitive option for a
| significant portion of the population. It's because of how
| Amtrak is funded.
|
| There are a handful of routes in the US where Amtrak is
| currently competitive. As others have mentioned, these are
| mostly in the Northeast Corridor. Amtrak should be investing in
| improving these, but instead treats them like a cash cow to
| fund unprofitable routes elsewhere.
|
| There are also a few routes that, with a little bit of
| investment, could be competitive. LA to San Diego is one
| example -- they're the #2 and #8 largest cities in the US, only
| 120 miles apart, and one has notoriously bad traffic. The
| biggest problem with current service is that some sections of
| the route share a single track for both directions of travel,
| which can lead to cascading delays. They're fixing this, but
| because there's so little funding, it's going to take 30 years
| just to lay a few dozen miles of track alongside the existing
| track. It would seem like a no-brainer to prioritize this.
|
| But because Amtrak requires congressional funding, and no
| member of congress wants to be left out, you end up getting
| grand plans that touch every state in the country, and you have
| to add routes that have no chance of being successful just to
| get enough votes. Eyeballing the map, it looks like the only
| state in the continental US without a stop is South Dakota.
| presentation wrote:
| I wish rail in the US were run more like those in Japan -
| private companies who derive their profits from real estate
| in and around stations, not solely from fares. It always
| astounds me how unproductive the land around Amtrak and other
| public transit stations are - if you're building a tube that
| sends people into land you own, there's immense opportunity
| for you, and in a way that's the whole point - the reason
| people ride trains is usually not to ride the train, but to
| go somewhere, so why not operate that "somewhere"?
| pmayrgundter wrote:
| I wonder if Amtrak is the antipattern here for just that
| reason. Or even the state. How about county to county? Rail
| just can't cost this much in actuality. It's gotta be the
| systematics
| rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote:
| I don't understand why self-driving cars aren't being discussed
| here. Trains require massively expensive redundant
| infrastructure, fail completely at last-mile, and you're at the
| mercy of a rigid departure schedule. We already have an
| incredible highway network in America - let's put it to better
| use.
|
| It's so easy to imagine taking a self-driving sleeper taxi
| overnight between Portland and Oakland in 10 hours - just throw
| a bed in the damn thing, go to sleep, and wake up at your
| destination. Give self-driving cars a dedicated lane with a
| different speed limit, and you could bomb the trip in 7 hours,
| easy. It'd all utilize existing infrastructure, we'd just be
| increasing the throughput.
|
| If the car is electric, it'll be multiples cheaper than the
| fuel costs of driving yourself, a spiffy van with nice spread
| out reclining seats could have multiple passengers so the cost
| could be split further, and it'd probably be 1-2 orders of
| magnitude better for the environment than taking a flight.
| sangnoir wrote:
| Trains are more energy efficient, and unlike self-driving
| cars, this rail plan has a clear roadmap to being achieved by
| 2035.
| bpye wrote:
| Yes! The technology for rail exists today (and is well
| proven in Europe and Asia). Self driving cars are largely
| new and unproven with no clear path to widespread use, with
| both regulatory and sociatal challenges, in addition to the
| technical shortcomings that remain.
|
| I would hope that Amtrak in the long term also electrifies
| the rail network so that the dependency on diesel engines
| can be reduced - for some routes this may not make sense,
| but where you have frequent services it seems that it would
| be a worthwhile impovement too.
| dsr_ wrote:
| Everything you've said there applies to a current mode of
| transportation called "the bus". Unlike self-driving cars, we
| already have them.
|
| Ten hours by road. Large enough to have sleeper compartments
| or reclining seats. (Large enough to have restrooms.) Driven
| by an NI -- natural intelligence -- whose competence is
| accredited by the state government in a reasonably fair
| examination of skills. Give a dedicated lane to the bus, and
| seven hours might be within reach.
|
| Really, the problem is that I see flights between the two
| cities at $70 per person and 2.5 hours in the air. Even if it
| takes an hour on each extra, that's 5.5 hours versus 7 for a
| fairly reasonable price.
| rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote:
| The bus still fails the last mile, it's subject to rigid
| departure schedules, and doesn't offer the comfort of being
| in an individual compartment.
|
| All these modes of transportation have pros and cons. How
| do we get people to take less flights? Busses already
| exist. Decent fast and cheap trains don't, nor do self-
| driving cars. Both will help poach people away from shorter
| flights, but one is (potentially) much cheaper and easier
| to implement.
| rgbrenner wrote:
| Just to add: Portland to Oakland is only 628mi.. most people
| have cars, and it's only $60-80 in gas. Even if they gave me a
| free ticket, I wouldn't trade 10 hours for that.
| nn3 wrote:
| That assumes that you don't need to drive?
|
| 10 hours of active driving is something completely different
| than 20 hours being a passenger/sightseer (of which I would
| spend significant part asleep or reading) In fact I don't
| think it's safe to drive for 10 hours, you probably need to
| add several hours of rest, and will still be half zombie
| after that.
|
| At some point the train becomes attractive. It's certainly a
| much less stressful option.
|
| That said I must agree American trains are in poor shape
| compared to other places.
| bradleyjg wrote:
| People seem to want inter-regional passenger rail for it's own
| sake and search around for a justification to stick on that
| preference.
|
| From an environmental perspective low speed inter-regional
| fright rail makes a lot more sense.
|
| Where high(er) speed passenger rail could really shine is
| intra-regional lines. Granted stops slow things down, but the
| NYC region commuter lines (LIRR, MMR, NJT) have horrible
| average speeds.
|
| I understand from friends in greater DC and the Bay Area that
| the situations there are similar.
| jhgb wrote:
| > Going from Portland to Oakland is supposed to take 18 hours
| but actually took 20 when I rode it.
|
| Seriously? That's the speed of our slowest local regional
| trains here in Europe. Long distance trains are about twice as
| fast per km even on a trip one fourth the length and with
| several stops. If this is a regular state of affairs then it's
| no wonder that the state of train travel in the US is what it
| is.
| ac29 wrote:
| Its a little short of 1200km and goes through some very
| rugged terrain (cascade mountains). Yes, it would be nice if
| it was faster, but comparing it to say Paris - Berlin (about
| the same distance) isnt quite right for several reasons.
| jhgb wrote:
| Yep, that should be slightly under 10 hours on my country's
| terrible railway network (if my country were _that_ long).
| We have to operate those ETR 470-derived trains ( "CD Class
| 680") at like 65-70% of their design speed since we don't
| have any proper rails for them either.
| kuschku wrote:
| Rome - Frankfurt (about 1200km) takes (with a looot of
| changes, and a lot of different trains) about 11 hours.
|
| With an ECx or ECE it'd be below 8h.
| brudgers wrote:
| It is about 1000 mountainous kilometers from Portland to
| Oakland. There are no major metropolitan areas in between.
| Just places most people have only vaguely heard of surrounded
| by places only the locals ever go.
|
| And there are very few reasons to travel from Portland to
| Oakland on a dedicated itinerary. No critical business
| relationships. No historic ties. No cultural affiliation.
|
| Comparisons of US rail to Europe usually ignore most of
| Europe. 18 hours reflects a rail speed comparable to what
| Google returns for a train trip from Zagreb to Tirana. I'm
| not sure you can even take a train from Berlin to Baku.
| jhgb wrote:
| The question is...why does a major inter-city railroad lead
| through such a strange route?
|
| > 18 hours reflects a rail speed comparable to what Google
| returns for a train trip from Zagreb to Tirana
|
| Ehm...I don't believe there's been railway connection from
| anywhere to Tirana since 2013. Albanian railway
| infrastructure is largely non-existent at this point. And
| the only international railway connection to Albania is
| freight-only. Not quite sure what Google told you there.
| brudgers wrote:
| The route is determined by plate tectonics. Subduction of
| the Pacific Plate beneath the North American Plate
| generates substantial orogenic forces. The rail route
| runs between the coastal ranges to the west and the spine
| of the Americas that extends from the Arctic to the
| Patagonia...aka, "the American Cordillera."
|
| Quite simply it runs along the best available route. Down
| the Willamette Valley to Eugene and then...well it has to
| make do past Mount Shasta until near Sacramento.
|
| ---
|
| I'm not going to express faux outrage at the shortcomings
| of European rail based on the lack of service to Triana.
| Rather it is to point out that in this sort of discussion
| of US passenger rail, Europeans tend to ignore a great
| deal of Europe. More understandable is the
| misunderstanding of US geography, even in the US people
| presume similar political geography implies similar
| physical geography.
|
| Finally, Oakland to Portland is not a major passenger
| route. Not really even a major rail route since the sea
| is a viable alternative for freight along the coast and
| most freight in the US travels east-west.
| jhgb wrote:
| In that case I don't understand what are those plans for
| that major high-speed rail on the west coast about. If
| _this_ is "the best available route" for a major north-
| south railway along the US west coast, then those high-
| speed rail plans are a pipe dream, surely?
|
| As for Albania, you know how to pick the one part of
| Europe where train service is crap - anything from Bosnia
| southeastwards in
| http://emptypipes.org/supp/isochrone_zagreb/. Pretty much
| any other direction is perfectly serviceable and vastly
| better connected. Apparently you can get sooner to Paris
| from Zagreb by train that to any of Albania. Is the US
| west coast due to its geography a similar uniquely bad
| place?
| brudgers wrote:
| The sane passenger rail plans in the US West are
| regional. Connecting Portland, the Puget Sound and
| Vancouver on the one hand. Serving the cities of
| California's Central Valley on the other. The California
| route makes some sense as a high speed route. Less so as
| a connection of LA and San Francisco because it is
| roundabout. The more direct route follows the old Camino
| Real up the Salinas River Valley and then the San Andreas
| Rift toward San Jose where the 101 runs today.
|
| The US west is mostly empty. When you look at the
| article's map even the named places are tiny. La Junta is
| tiny. Flagstaff is less than 100,000 as a metro. Reno is
| about half a million. Cheyenne is in Wyoming. The entire
| state has fewer than a million people.
|
| In terms of European rail travel, I avoided the low
| hanging fruit like Dublin to Lisbon, Reykjavik to London,
| or Oslo to Paris.
| ggreer wrote:
| I know it sounds absurd, but you can check Google Maps for
| the possible routes and times.[1] It looks like a Greyhound
| bus is actually 2 hours faster (16 hours). Also it looks like
| some parts of the track along the west coast are undergoing
| maintenance. If you want to take the train down to San Diego
| you have to get off your train, take a bus, then get on
| another train.[2]
|
| 1. https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Portland,+Oregon/Oakland,+
| Ca...
|
| 2. https://www.amtrak.com/alert/pacific-surfliner-coast-
| starlig...
| benatkin wrote:
| I agree that east to west and north to south cross-country rail
| is a novelty. The short haul trains are often useful though. I
| think the novelty is worth keeping but they should focus on
| that novelty. I'd like to see them have just one east to west
| route, say, from SF to NYC, and one route on each coast, and
| besides that coordinate the short haul trains with the
| cities/states that are using them, perhaps even letting the
| cities/states run some of them fully. The short haul trains
| should be run separately from the novelty trains. The proposal
| is the opposite, and that's why I think it's not a good one.
|
| For example, I'd like for the train to Miami to skip Orlando
| and Tampa, and for Brightline to be left to bring service back
| if it makes economic sense (they're already working on
| Orlando). If not, there are buses like Megabus and Flixbus.
| That would shorten the Boston to Miami route quite a bit.
| anaerobicover wrote:
| It's been pointed out numerous times elsewhere in the
| threads, but long-haul routes _are_ short-haul routes, for
| people in the middle. Very few people drive I-80 from end to
| end. Lots of people drive it for trips like Iowa City to
| Omaha.
| benatkin wrote:
| I'm aware of that. I don't think amtrak is a good
| alternative to the interstate (I agree with the comnent I'm
| replying to), so we should stop trying to make it one. A
| single cross-country route that runs during waking hours
| and has fewer stops would be cool though.
| [deleted]
| ghaff wrote:
| Amtrak does not actually go to SF today, to be pedantic.
| benatkin wrote:
| Hah, I actually lived less than half a mile from the
| Emeryville station for over a year. I was just thinking in
| terms of the metro area, but that does tack on some more
| time!
| mrgordon wrote:
| "The state has since given up on connecting LA & SF by high
| speed rail"
|
| We are going to need a citation here because I'm pretty sure
| this isn't true
| ggreer wrote:
| Back in 2019 Governor Newsom put most of the CA HSR plan on
| hold indefinitely.[1] Now the official plan is to build a
| 171-mile high speed rail link from Bakersfield (population
| 524,000) through Fresno (population 542,000) to Merced
| (population 83,000), though that might be cancelled since
| it'll cost over $20 billion.[2]
|
| 1. https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2019/02/12/gavin-newsom-
| br...
|
| 2.https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-09-08/newsom-
| b...
| bobthepanda wrote:
| CA fucking up HSR has more to do with CA than HSR. The entire
| thing is basically a mismanaged contractor/consultant gravy
| train.
|
| Interestingly enough, rail is competitive in the _opposite_
| direction from Portland, namely to Seattle, and Seattle to
| Vancouver. SeaTac is far enough away from both Tacoma and
| Seattle to be a slog from many parts of the metro area, and the
| sole highway corridor gets very congested. And it mostly
| consists of lots of small investments to the existing route,
| like a $181M bypass that shaved ten whole minutes off of a 3h30
| trip, a 6.7% improvement in travel times.
|
| It's most likely these types of smaller improvements that
| Amtrak will be seeking, and other bang-for-the-buck
| improvements like electrification. (Even on the same track and
| same speed limits, electric trains offer better acceleration
| than their diesel counterparts, which is similar to what we're
| now seeing from the electrification of cars.)
| gumby wrote:
| It's a commonplace to believe that train travel makes sense for
| medium trips where the cost of getting to/from the airport (plus
| boarding bullshit) dominates time in the air -- 2-3 hour flights.
|
| But the pandemic has shown an additional possibility by
| increasing the acceptability of working remotely. It may become
| more attractive to have a slightly longer but less-hassle trip
| (board in city centers or at least locations closer than an
| airport) if you are continuously net-connected and able to have
| quiet video conferences and do other work.
|
| In the 90s I spent a lot of time on Shinkansen and TGV and had
| good phone service and networking (even at GPRS speeds) which
| meant it wasn't really "lost" time. And certainly I was not
| alone. (It helped that there was a culture of having actual phone
| conversations away from the cabin).
| ghaff wrote:
| >board in city centers
|
| That can be a feature. It can also be a bug for all the people
| who don't live in the city. If I had to board Amtrak in
| downtown Boston (rather than the suburban station I use), that
| would probably tip the scales against me using the train.
| gumby wrote:
| It's common for long distance trains to have a few local
| stops near the terminus (or major waypoint).
| karmelapple wrote:
| I wonder what the difference is in potentially likely riders?
| The only time I've used Amtrak in the last 5 years was to get
| to Boston, and I wanted to be in the city. I used Acela
| Express and it worked great.
|
| Faster trains for major city to major city, but slower trains
| to reach the suburbs?
| ghaff wrote:
| Route 128 Station is very popular and much more convenient
| than South Station for anyone from at least the western or
| southern suburbs. Anecdotally, it feels like about the same
| number of people get on there as get on in Boston.
|
| There is a commuter rail network into Boston. But many of
| the lines go to a different train station. It definitely
| wouldn't make sense for me. At that point I might as well
| just drive to Manhattan (which would actually be faster
| anyway) or maybe New Haven, where I could pick up a
| MetroNorth commuter rail. (Have been thinking of trying the
| latter anyway next time.)
| paleotrope wrote:
| I just read this today.
|
| https://www.governing.com/now/taking-the-commuter-out-of-
| ame...
|
| The primary problem in Boston (from my perspective and I
| expert alot of other people) is the schedule of the
| commuter rails is terrible. They just make zero sense. You
| can take a train into Boston between 6-10am and a train out
| of Boston between 4 and 7pm, otherwise, you have to wait
| hours for a train.
| ghaff wrote:
| Hours is a bit of an exaggeration (probably more like 90
| minutes on my line) but that's basically true. And you
| have to tack on buffer if you need to take the subway to
| the train station.
|
| I'll take commuter rail by preference to go into the city
| but only if I'm basically going in and out at normal
| commuting hours. I won't take it if I'm going in for an
| evening event or even, generally, if I have an evening
| event following something in the daytime. But they're
| basically designed for commuters (hence the name) and, in
| my experience, are pretty empty the rest of the time.
|
| To your basic point, I don't think I've ever used
| commuter rail to connect to another mode of
| transportation whether train or plane. Just too much
| overhead.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > If I had to board Amtrak in downtown Boston (rather than
| the suburban station I use), that would probably tip the
| scales against me using the train.
|
| In Switzerland, the inter-region trains are closely
| coordinated with the local networks of smaller trains, buses,
| even boats.
|
| You'd take some sort of mass transit from your suburban
| station to downtown Boston, and board the fast train minutes
| later.
| ghaff wrote:
| >board the fast train minutes later
|
| My commuter rail doesn't even come into the same train
| station as Amtrak headed south does.
|
| Amtrak to NYC is already a bit marginal for me because I
| drive an hour in basically the wrong direction to a
| suburban stop. If I had to go into Boston which is even
| further in the wrong direction, I just wouldn't do it.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Successful high-speed rail requires a successful and
| well-integrated local network like Switzerland's as well,
| yes.
| ghaff wrote:
| So France doesn't have successful HSR? Because last I
| looked Paris had a whole bunch of different rail
| stations.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Paris's different rail stations are well inter-connected
| by the Paris Metro. Said network doesn't have to be made
| up of just one form of transit; again, the Swiss network
| does an absolutely phenomenal job of matching up train,
| bus, etc. schedules into one unified transit network.
| ghaff wrote:
| And Boston's (and New York's) rail stations are connected
| by subway as well. But (like in Paris or London) I need
| to build in some generous buffer to catch a long distance
| train. I have no doubt Swiss trains do an unusually good
| job of aligning schedules but AFAIK that's not true of
| most places in Europe or Japan for that matter.
| billytetrud wrote:
| Trains are 200 year old technology that has hardly improved. What
| we need is skytran, which is 1/50th of the cost of trains for the
| same capacity: https://www.skytran.com/
| sacredcows wrote:
| Trains have improved dramatically, but Americans haven't been
| paying attention and haven't changed anything about them in 100
| years (in fact, they reverted by removing formerly electrified
| lines). Trains are a proven technology- highly energy-efficient
| and more pleasant to ride than a car or a bus.
| Zigurd wrote:
| Domestic air travel sucks because of lack of competition. This
| may help it suck less.
| rayiner wrote:
| The idea that $160 billion will build that, much less by 2035, is
| comical. Maryland's purple line will end up costing half a
| billion per mile to build non-grade separated light rail trolly
| through suburbs.
| masklinn wrote:
| The cost per mile is completely different between light rail
| and regular / high-speed rail, tho.
|
| The french LGV Est cost about 10kEUR / mile (4bn for 252
| miles), and it was not considered cheap. And that's including
| 800 millions worth of rolling stock too.
|
| If we exclude the rolling stock from Est's cost and assume
| those 160bn will be purely infrastructure, it should get you
| about 12500 miles of track (stations included).
| dilap wrote:
| The odds of this ever happening are probably slightly lower than
| the odds that China takes over and uses their high-speed rail
| expertise to get the job done.
| sillyquiet wrote:
| China's secret sauce in building their rail lines: Ignore
| environmental mitigation. Extremely low labor costs. Little or
| no cost for the land over which the line ran. Probably pretty
| extreme control over every supply vertical. I very much doubt
| it's a matter of 'expertise'
| throwawayboise wrote:
| Exactly. You can be sure that when China wants to build a new
| rail line, there are no environmental impact studies, or
| objections from NIMBYs. They just do it.
| akg_67 wrote:
| How do you think US built their rail network?
| sillyquiet wrote:
| Well yeah, but I don't think it'll fly nowadays. And
| shouldn't
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| How does your food get made, your food get picked, your
| grass get cut, your meat get packed, etc?
|
| Well being that this is the federal government, it
| doesn't get to use the immigrant labor that the private
| sector does, so you are right.
| sillyquiet wrote:
| You're not going to get much argument from me about how
| private industry exploits under-the-table labor. Doesn't
| mean it's a good thing when done under government aegis
| FreakyT wrote:
| Realistically you can't get big infrastructure projects
| built without angering _some_ group of people. People
| here in the US love the highway system, but there's
| absolutely no way anything like it could be built today.
|
| At some point we just need to decide that a project is
| worth building, and _will_ be built, regardless of the
| opposition.
| tolbish wrote:
| "Angering some group of people" is one way to put it.
| "Railroad labor camps" would be more accurate.
| dilap wrote:
| I could recast each of those as:
|
| - Effective cost benefit analysis that realizes rail is a net
| win environmentally
|
| - Ability to control costs & graft on large projects to keep
| labor costs reasonable
|
| - Effective government that understands it's worthwhile to
| allow some private loss for the net public good
|
| At the end of the day, I believe we'd all be better off with
| more highspeed rail in the US. There's is no fundamental lack
| of resources preventing us from doing it; the problem is a
| lack of competence and political organization.
| gpvos wrote:
| I recently read that China is expanding their rail network
| extra-fast now because the labour costs are still low; they
| expect them to rise soon. The other things are a factor as
| well, of course, and their expertise must definitely be
| growing by leaps and bounds as well.
| willyt wrote:
| Better to compare to France then. They build high speed lines
| for between 1/5th and 1/20th of the cost of the one the UK is
| building. Just to prempt the France is flat and land is cheap
| arguments. 1/5th is the cost of the section of line between
| Lyon and Marseille that crosses the Massif Central with 50
| tunnels and bridges and plenty of earthworks. The cost of
| land acquisition is only PS8bn of the PS100bn+ cost of HS2.
| beowulfey wrote:
| Europe is a much better indicator then. Tunnels are a good
| example, but you could do the same analysis for other types
| of infrastructure. For whatever reason, tunnel costs are
| significantly cheaper in other countries compared the USA
| [1]. There has to be a good reason!
|
| [1] https://tunnelingonline.com/why-tunnels-in-the-us-cost-
| much-...
| HenryKissinger wrote:
| The town of Vulcan, West Virginia only got funding for a much-
| needed bridge in 1977 from state officials after appealing to
| the Soviet and East German governments for aid, receiving much
| publicity over their plight from the USSR.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Ironic considering the political leanings of West Virginia
| today.
| axiolite wrote:
| Amtrak hasn't worked out. The USPS no longer needs mail sorting
| cars, and air travel has been deregulated and is highly cost
| competitive.
|
| The Amtrak system should just be abolished, except in the North
| East corridor where they own much of the tracks.
|
| Remove the prohibition from mixing freight and passenger cars,
| and in fact partially subsidize freight carriers having an Amtrak
| car at the back of most every freigt train... partially
| subsidized to ensure they will making stops in the small remote
| cities without other transit options. Modernize the systems to
| allow bypassing stops with no-one waiting to get on or off, and
| use more cameras and intercoms with fewer on-train employees to
| keep costs down while still supervising and assisting passengers.
|
| Technology is marching on, and if Amtrak doesn't make these sorts
| of changes soon, it'll become entirely redundant. Passenger
| trains are faster and more efficient than automobiles right now,
| but a near-future with self-driving, fully electric vehicles on
| non-pneumatic tires could be faster, cheaper, and less polluting
| than passenger rail.
| sudosteph wrote:
| As a North Carolinian, I'm incredibly psyched about this map. Not
| only because it finally includes an Asheville connection, but
| because connecting the piedmont cities with high speed rail could
| be a game changer for job mobilitiy and affordable home ownership
| in the region. Many people don't realize how dense the population
| of the NC piedmont is, because it's not localized around one big
| city. But if you follow that line between Charlotte and Raleigh,
| you'll actually find about 6.5million people over 11.2k sq miles,
| which is comparable to Atlanta's 6.5 million over 10.5k sq
| miles![1]
|
| Right now, the best jobs in the state are divided between
| Charlotte-area, and Triangle area (Raleigh and Durham). House
| prices are going up like crazy in those areas, meanwhile the more
| affordable cities that are outside the range of a comfortable
| commute to those cities (High Point -> Triangle), (Winston ->
| Charlotte) can't quite compete with the network effects around
| banking, healthcare, and tech that are driving the growth in the
| big areas. Those cities wouldn't actually be a terrible a commute
| away from Charlotte or The Triangle (45min-1hour in ideal
| conditions), but traffic during peak hours and constant road
| construction along those routes would make it miserable.
|
| If there was fast, reliable train service, I could definitely see
| commuters giving those areas a closer look. Especially since so
| many jobs these days seem to be less stringent about office time
| (ie, only go into the office 2x a week).
|
| [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piedmont_Crescent
| [deleted]
| antiterra wrote:
| Winston may not be keeping up with Charlotte or RTP but it has
| Novant and Wake Forest School of Medicine which are decent
| anchors for its own growth and continued transition from
| tobacco economy.
| kjrose wrote:
| I love via rail in canada and I used it both to travel between
| Toronto and Montreal and to travel all the way west to Edmonton.
| From my many travels I learned that while commuter rail (read go
| trains) can do well, long distance rail just doesn't make sense
| anymore. Neither financially nor practically. It's a two day trip
| from Toronto to Edmonton.
|
| The trip from Toronto to Montreal is a full day and is worth it
| if you hate flying and want to avoid security. However as it gets
| used more and more they are adding more airport style security
| features taking away that benefit as well.
|
| Now, when I travelled to Japan and rode the shinkansen I really
| enjoyed it and was amazed by how quickly I could get around. But
| I also saw how absurdly expensive it was and how without
| government support on top it fundamentally would be impossible
| except in the highest density corridors of Canada and the US.
|
| I love trains. Absolutely adore them. But I cannot see how in the
| low density areas of North America they can remotely compete with
| cars or airlines.
| phamilton wrote:
| I'm a fan of overnight rail. If high speed rail were available,
| Toronto to Edmonton would be about 11 hours. Grab a 10pm train
| and arrive at 7am (with time change). I'd take that over a 5
| hour flight.
| kjrose wrote:
| Oh it'd be nice but it'd be as expensive if not more than a
| first class flight.
|
| The sleeper car I got for the 2 night trip cost me quite a
| chunk of change.
| phamilton wrote:
| I wonder if high speed rail would be cheaper. Is the
| primary cost driver time or miles?
|
| I could see a scenario where getting a sleeper car for 10
| hours would be cheaper than getting one for 36 hours.
| talknewswale wrote:
| chotte kaarobaariyoN ko cup kraayaa jaa rhaa hai
| https://talknewswale.com
| magwa101 wrote:
| Electric busses, battery swaps, reserved lanes / streets. At
| least for cities I wonder why this isn't proposed more. If you
| look at LA you take major EW and NS roads and take cars off of
| them. Bikes, busses, pedestrians. It seems we want to make
| everything better without making any changes to existing
| infrastructure/thinking.
| elymar wrote:
| South Dakota gets no love.
| [deleted]
| transfire wrote:
| The southern route is some sort of joke. I've taken the train
| twice from Santa Fe, NM to Sanford, FL. Both times it went
| through Chicago, IL. Talk about indirect! I later read that due
| to some sort of federal shinanigans all routes crossing the
| Mississippi go via Chicago. Does the southern route ever get
| used?
| fasteddie31003 wrote:
| I'm not sure how a train is any better than a bus with a
| dedicated lane for travel for less than 100 miles. I really don't
| see how light rail is better than buses. Buses have so many more
| advantages. 1. easy rerouting to more busy lines 2. not blocked
| if one in front breaks down, 3. resale to other bus lines. 4.
| less up front cost. I think we could reinvent the bus to make it
| more comfortable and appealing.
| username90 wrote:
| Roads that can handle heavy driving are much more expensive
| than train tracks, especially per capacity. Adding passenger
| train capacity is therefore the cheapest way to reduce load on
| your roads.
| Oddskar wrote:
| Well I'm pretty sure how a train is better than a bus.
|
| High speed trains are three times as fast.
| topkai22 wrote:
| None of the existing routes are built for high speed trains
| and the infrastructure investment proposed ($80B) is far too
| small to even begin any sort of meaningful high speed rail
| service.
| phamilton wrote:
| This is key. I can drive faster than Amtrak if there's no
| traffic. Modern high speed trains change a lot of the math.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Crossing the midwest diagonally, you're rarely going to be
| able to drive faster than 65 mph (legally). Even slow US
| trains can do 80 mph (though they do stop, too, and
| frequently get delayed by freight). If you could run trains
| at even 100mph, which is far from a "modern high speed
| train", driving would never be faster.
| phamilton wrote:
| SLC to Oakland is about 3 hours faster by car than by
| rail right now.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| That's crossing the west, or even the west of the west.
| Trains are slower through that section.
|
| A 100mph train (again, not a modern high speed train)
| with limited stops would beat the car. Not sure the track
| could be built for this in this geography, however.
| phamilton wrote:
| Yes, though the speed limit along the same stretch across
| Nevada is 80 mph, with the general flow of traffic
| between 85-90mph. Legality aside, the roads are very high
| quality and you can cruise along at 100 mph without much
| difficulty in a car.
|
| 100+ mph roads aren't unheard of (see autobahn). Neither
| are 100+ mph trains. The fact that neither is available
| is frustrating.
| fasteddie31003 wrote:
| I said for less than 100 miles of travel.
| dilap wrote:
| For me, it's just so much nicer to travel by train.
| fasteddie31003 wrote:
| Agreed. We should make buses more appealing IMO.
| dilap wrote:
| I think some of it is unavoidable. E.g., I tend to get
| carsick on busses if I try to read or use a computer, but
| not on trains -- something about the nature of the motion.
| pmayrgundter wrote:
| I think there's a bit of complimentary too.. like you say,
| buses are easier to build up, which helps grow the market for
| shared transport between population centers. That's the market
| that needs to be big to justify rail investment. Also eg in
| Europe, they live together nicely with FlixBus providing
| frequent, fast and cheap service between cities but seemingly
| not killing the rail. Maybe this is an example of the Jevons
| Paradox.. it's actually the greater efficiency of each (over
| cars or air) that creates the greater demand
| adamjb wrote:
| Easy rerouting is also a disadvantage: no one wants to rely on
| a service that can be effortlessly taken away.
| ghaff wrote:
| This is one of the big arguments for light rail over buses.
| Once it's built, development can take place along the route
| with fairly high confidence that it will run, albeit perhaps
| on a reduced schedule, even if ridership doesn't meet
| projections.
| sacredcows wrote:
| Trains are more energy-efficient than buses, have lower
| operating costs (especially if electric), more comfortable. In
| terms of light rail vs bus however >easy rerouting to more busy
| lines ... you can just increase frequency >not blocked if one
| in front breaks down This is a risk, but generally the idea is
| to do enough preventative maintenance so that this doesn't
| happen and to have sufficient crossover switches to work around
| this >Resale to other bus lines It's best to just use your
| vehicles until EOL, Toronto used their last generation LRVs for
| decades- far longer than a bus would last. >Less upfront cost
| That's REALLY not a benefit. This is why American
| infrastructure is failing: a failure to consider maintenance
| cost or have any long-term thinking. The bus can not really get
| more comfortable. Drive on a smooth road and have a great
| suspension system: it'll still be less comfortable than a
| smooth ride on a train.
|
| This whole "one mode to rule them all" attitude- common in
| American news media- is toxic. Cars, trains, buses, planes, and
| more all have their place.
| kolinko wrote:
| How much time did you spend in a bus vs train? I would choose a
| medium quality train over any quality bus, if we're talking
| about comfort
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > I'm not sure how a train is any better than a bus
|
| kWh/passenger-mile, which, even if you assume both have
| environmentally-equal power sources, means environmental
| impact.
|
| Probably also easier to keep other vehicles off your
| "dedicated" lane with a train.
| CydeWeys wrote:
| You're forgetting about traffic. I've taken the NYC to DC bus
| quite a few times, and have had anything from 4 to 7 hours in
| travel time depending on how bad traffic is on the road and
| whether there's any accidents. Now if they'd put a dedicated
| bus lane on the highway that'd be much better, but sadly it
| doesn't exist.
|
| Train service between the two cities, meanwhile, is much more
| reliable in how long it's actually going to take.
| annoyingnoob wrote:
| > President Biden's plan would revolutionize the way Americans
| travel, finally launching U.S. passengers into the 21st century
|
| How sad that our trains suck so badly.
| antattack wrote:
| I would like to see planned cost of tickets. Last time I looked
| cost of taking rail as very close to flying.
|
| EDIT: here's an example:
|
| Amtrak NY to Florida: $123 to 200 (21h)
|
| Flight NY to Florida: $69 to 97 (3.5h)
|
| Amtrak Iowa to California: $300 (52h)
|
| Flight Iowa to California: $200 - 300 (6h)
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I assume you are talking about having your own cabin/sleeper?
| ghaff wrote:
| With long distance train, sleepers are usually much more than
| flying. (This is true in Europe as well for the most part.)
| And even regular seats may be significantly more expensive.
|
| A few years back I casually looked into taking an overnight
| train to Chicago from the East Coast and it was going to be
| something like 4x the cost of flying.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| $123 definitely does not cover a sleeper.
| 0xffff2 wrote:
| No way. I'm looking at taking a train from Southern Oregon to
| Southern California in a couple of months (mostly because I
| can and I just don't feel like flying or driving). The price
| for a sleeper one way is $350. The return trip is $450.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| Won't NIMBYs just tie every square inch of track up in endless
| lawsuits until Rearden gives up?
| spikels wrote:
| > "You and your family could travel coast to coast without a
| single tank of gas onboard a high-speed train," Biden said at the
| plan's unveiling.
|
| This makes no sense and will never happen. And this plan will
| make no significant progress towards this pipe dream.
|
| This is a bald-faced lie to sell a political proposal.
| gaoshan wrote:
| The train line shown going through Cleveland is already in
| operation. I would love to be able to take the train to Chicago
| or Boston or NYC. However,
|
| - It is not cheap
|
| - it is not reliable (time wise)
|
| - it is not fast
|
| - it requires leaving in the middle of the night or before the
| crack of dawn
|
| Make it so that the cost is effective, the trip arrives on time,
| it is not significantly slower than driving and let me leave at a
| sane hour and then they will have something useful.
| jessaustin wrote:
| This can't be real. They're connecting Denver to Pueblo but not
| La Junta which is 60 more miles across flat prairie with 700'
| difference in elevation. With the connection one could reasonably
| travel from Denver to Kansas City or Dallas. Without it the
| closest routes are through Chicago or Los Angeles. I do
| appreciate the idea that St Louis could get "enhanced services"
| to Chicago, however. Right now taking the bus is more convenient.
| mlinksva wrote:
| Is taking the bus between St. Louis and Chicago really more
| convenient now than the train (Lincoln Service)? Google maps
| seems to show Greyhound taking over an hour longer, by a less
| direct route (through Champaign). I've taken the Lincoln
| Service several times, though only Chicago to/from Normal or
| Springfield, and it was very convenient. Wish it were faster
| (and IIRC long-delayed upgrades aren't going to shave much
| time), but I'm glad it exists.
| roody15 wrote:
| Not to be a Debbie downer but I was an elected city councilman in
| an Illinois city for 8 years (4 elections). In 2012 during Obama
| years we were told a new Amtrak rail line from Iowa City to
| Chicago with a large new station in the quad cities had been
| approved. (first pitched in 2009/2010 from Obama admin)
|
| We were told that funding was already approved and project would
| be completed by 2018.
|
| In 2018 we were told project and money were allocated and the
| project would now start in 2019 but had been delayed.
|
| Fast forward to 2021 ... nothing ever happened. Some people
| inspected the rail lines.. they improved a couple of crossings.
| That's it.
|
| Honestly it's been a bit disheartening to see how slow and
| difficult things seem to move at the federal and state level :(
|
| https://www.rtands.com/passenger/intercity/quad-cities-to-ch...
| perardi wrote:
| Listen, I love mass transit, I love big sweeping plans...but
| remember when the last administration Biden was in was all about
| this?
|
| https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/blog/2009/04/16/a-visio...
|
| Obama's high-speed rail plan went absolutely nowhere, in part
| because Republican governors flatly refused to participate.
|
| https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2010/12/no-high...
| melling wrote:
| Maybe skip the vision and simply build one reasonably priced
| high-speed line somewhere. LA to Vegas?
|
| California has been trying to build a line for 5 decades. Now
| the price is beyond reasonable.
|
| China built 22,000 miles for under 500 billion?
|
| At this point we've got to be near ready for 300 mph maglevs.
| perardi wrote:
| _Maybe skip the vision and simply build one reasonably priced
| high-speed line somewhere. LA to Vegas?_
|
| ...well, OK, but then you say...
|
| _California has been trying to build a line for 5 decades.
| Now the price is beyond reasonable._
|
| So I'm not sure how we get to that reasonably priced point.
| NickM wrote:
| _So I 'm not sure how we get to that reasonably priced
| point. _
|
| Well I'm no expert, but other countries seem to be managing
| it just fine.
| sillyquiet wrote:
| I wonder much attention China paid to environmental
| mitigation, labor costs, and the cost of the property over
| which these lines ran.
| melling wrote:
| Moving a billion people a year by rail is likely much more
| environmentally friendly than with cars and planes.
| db48x wrote:
| Building a new rail line is wonderfully easy when nobody
| actually owns the land they live on.
| apostacy wrote:
| Most high speed rail lines are just upgrades to existing
| lines.
|
| We already have these rights of way settled. That is all
| the more reason that should not be abandoned.
|
| It is typical to run minimal service to maintain the
| route, until service can be improved. China's passenger
| rail in rural areas looked downright dysfunctional 25
| years ago, until it was upgraded, now it is the best in
| the world.
|
| I think it is perfectly fine to run empty trains to the
| middle of nowhere.
|
| NYC runs excessive service to neighborhoods that don't
| need it. There are four different lines to Coney Island
| that are nearly empty by the time they reach their
| destination, even during rush hour. They should not be
| abandoned though, because those neighborhoods have the
| capacity to grow. Neighborhoods that were lower traffic
| 20 years ago have only improved because of subway access,
| and are now reaching capacity limits. If we keep pruning
| parts of the network that are under-performing, we will
| be left with nothing.
|
| I don't think that characterizing mass transit networks
| as unidirectional money sinks is correct. Cost goes in
| the other direction as well; if you invest more, then
| they expand and more people use them, and then they
| become more efficient to operate.
|
| Eventually, populations align themselves around well
| developed public transit, but that can take decades. We
| just spent decades re-aligning the population around
| government subsidized highways and air travel, that's
| all.
| treis wrote:
| >Most high speed rail lines are just upgrades to existing
| lines. We already have these rights of way settled. That
| is all the more reason that should not be abandoned.
|
| Most of that is used for freight as well. You can't
| realistically use the same rails for freight and high
| speed rail. So if we want high speed rail it will have to
| be entirely new tracks in a new right of way.
| spikels wrote:
| > You can't realistically use the same rails for freight
| and high speed rail.
|
| Exactly. When Europe decided to upgrade their passenger
| rail system last century they cannibalized their century-
| old existing freight network. Now 75% of their freight
| (by weight-distance) is by diesel truck and only 19% by
| rail (mostly in Eastern Europe). Similar thing happened
| in Japan. Obviously these are huge trade offs: costs,
| efficiency, quality, pollution, etc.
|
| Transportation systems are extremely complex. High speed
| passenger rail is just one small part of this huge
| picture.
|
| Transportation By Mode (EU, US, Japan)
|
| Freight: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Modal-Split-
| of-Freight-T...
|
| Passenger: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Modal-
| Split-of-Passenger...
| db48x wrote:
| Higher speed trains require a larger turn radius. The NE
| corridor is so built up that buying the land to widen all
| the curves would be a huge expense. Buying up people's
| houses and businesses and tearing them down to build a
| faster train line might not pay off in the long term.
| ghaff wrote:
| A lot of commuter rail is like that. When I take commuter
| rail into Boston, it's almost empty when I get on or off
| near the end of the line while it's often standing room
| only during peak times by the time it gets near the city.
| dmos62 wrote:
| Train travel in China is great! I really wish Europe had
| international train lines like that.
| fallingknife wrote:
| Here's the problem:
|
| short trips - cars beat trains
|
| long trips- planes beat trains
|
| This is why we have successful train service only in the
| northeast where the trips are medium length, and cars advantages
| are mitigated by the awful traffic on 95.
| thrower123 wrote:
| Basically the Acela corridor only works because Boston, New
| York, and Washington DC actually have working subway systems,
| so when you get dumped off at the train station, you can get
| somewhere within the city without paying a bajillion dollars in
| taxis or Ubers.
|
| People also like to point at the German train system, which is
| very good, but mostly people have the experience of coming into
| Berlin on it, and again, Berlin has one of the best public
| transit systems in the world.
| techsupporter wrote:
| Agreed about Berlin, but to me that says that as part of a
| commitment to HSR, we also have a commitment to local
| transport. Fortunately, there's a lot of low-hanging fruit
| here.
|
| For example, I live in Seattle. We regularly vote to tax
| ourselves to build and operate transit service. In 2019, just
| before the pandemic hit, we had a 10-minute citywide bus
| network with fast, easy transfers across about 85% of the
| city. People used the heck out of it, especially in
| combination with the two light rail stations that opened in
| 2016.
|
| When my spouse and I took a three-week trip across Germany to
| see where parts of our family are from[0], we didn't touch
| the wheel of a car once. Big city like Frankfurt, small town
| like Lutherstadt Wittenberg, in-between like Leipzig, they
| all worked. They were some combination of walkable,
| understandable bus service, and local rail.
|
| There's infrastructure and there's culture. Americans don't
| have the idea that cities and towns can be accessible on foot
| and by transport, so we don't hold ourselves to that
| standard. But we could, with no loss of convenience for many
| of us.
| pharmakom wrote:
| If you have a set route, like a commute from the suburbs into a
| city, then a train should be the better choice.
|
| If it isn't then your local authority does a poor job on
| infrastructure.
| 2ion wrote:
| A friend is living in the Japanese sticks but on a Shinkansen
| line. He commutes via Shinkansen directly to Shinagawa
| station, almost next to his office. Zero changes, a 1hour
| train ride with reserved seating in a quiet environment. He
| almost always clocks in for the ride and does quiet work, but
| it's also a great way to relax. The expensive train fare is
| essentially what he saves on Tokyo rent in exchange for being
| able to afford a great house with a large yard.
| smcl wrote:
| This sounds quite idyllic, your friend is very lucky
| ghaff wrote:
| If I'm going into Boston from the ex-urb where I live, I'll
| take the commuter rail if I go in "9-5" because the commute
| at rush hour is awful and parking is expensive. But it
| doesn't work if I'm going in for an evening event, say,
| because the drive isn't as bad, parking tends to be cheaper,
| and the schedules outside of rush hour are not frequent.
|
| In general, train on the Northeast Corridor is pretty good
| especially if you're not going the whole route. But I
| actually would be faster to drive to Manhattan than taking
| the Acela. However, it's a lousy drive and I hate driving
| into Manhattan.
| fallingknife wrote:
| The problem is that you have to get to the station and then
| from the other station to your destination. This really only
| works in 2 situations. Dense urban centers where it makes
| sense to have stations at walking distance intervals, or
| cases where the city is so hard to drive/park in that it
| makes sense to drive to the rail station and then catch a
| train in (e.g. NY). Other than that it is fairly impossible
| to match the convenience of a car.
| gpvos wrote:
| Local infrastructure should optimize for bicycles (and
| walking too). Then you can have your stations at decent
| distances both from living districts and from each other.
| marcusverus wrote:
| This might work in northern locales, but given the
| climate it's not practicable here in the American South.
| Nobody wants to walk or ride a bike through sweltering
| heat (i.e. ~85-90degF with high humidity) from May
| through September.
| gpvos wrote:
| One wonders how people were capable of living there
| before the invention of the car.
| m463 wrote:
| Anyone have a working link to the map pdf?
| cbradford wrote:
| The population density has shown that this is a use less
| endeavor, and post COVID this makes little sense. We should be
| discouraging any commute for work. The idea of funneling people
| from the suburbs into the city daily is an idea whose time has
| past. Spend the money to upgrade internet infra and start
| deconstructing the cities. There should be an immense tax on any
| commuting into a center city to massively discourage that
| wasteful and environmentally harmful activity
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Looks like an interstate network to me, not commuter rail.
| Freestyler_3 wrote:
| It will never happen, everyone knows it. Just a hand out
| disguised as a plan for the people.
| ben_w wrote:
| Given the Amtrack link 404s [0], I have to ask if the picture in
| the article is supposed to be "it"? It shows _zero_ stops in
| South Dakota!
|
| By way of comparison, here is a map of European rail:
| https://www.eurail.com/content/dam/maps/Eurail-Map-2021.pdf
|
| [0] https://media.amtrak.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2021/04/Amtrak-C...
| zokier wrote:
| If comparing to European rail map, it is useful to keep in mind
| the population density map too, e.g.
| https://i.redd.it/kdi05qrq65o31.png
| CyanLite4 wrote:
| Article discusses the lack of stops in S.D.
| Jiejeing wrote:
| This european map is only showing stops in somewhat big cities,
| there are certainly thousands not pictured (I am inferring this
| from the french map at least, it make sense for readability
| though).
| ben_w wrote:
| Same for the U.K., Germany, The Netherlands, and Switzerland
| based on my experience in each; however this is the opposite
| of my concern, as I'm saying the American map that Amtrack
| are trying to show off with looks worryingly blank.
| zulln wrote:
| Our third most used train station in Sweden is not included
| in that map. Makes me wonder what criteria they used.
| burlesona wrote:
| A better map would omit that entire line from Spokane to Fargo.
| That's an incredible span with next to no population along it.
| Such lines are a big drain on Amtrak's ability to turn a
| profit, which - sadly - it must do because subsidizing rail is
| a political albatross.
| niftich wrote:
| The line from Spokane to Fargo hosts the Empire Builder,
| which is Amtrak's highest-ridership long distance train
| service [1].
|
| [1] http://media.amtrak.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2019/11/FY19-Year...
| ghaff wrote:
| I'm actually surprised that those long distance ridership
| numbers are as high as they are relative to something like
| the Northeast Corridor. I assume that must include some
| moderately popular but much shorter segments.
| burlesona wrote:
| But what is the operating cost vs income?
|
| I like rail service and wish we had better. But right now
| there's this political albatross in the US that rail is a
| slow, inefficient, money pit. That argument has some weight
| when you look at those super long distance lines. But when
| you exclude them and focus on the northeast corridor where
| Amtrak has good quality of service, the argument falls
| apart.
|
| To me, the long game for the US to have better rail service
| means focusing on delivering excellent service quality in
| the places where they can to get some wins. Then expand
| service as they can while maintaining quality.
|
| Sprinkling "a little rail" broadly across the country costs
| a lot more money and delivers far lower quality service. We
| only do it because of the need to get the senators from
| rural states to support our federal rail program.
| kilovoltaire wrote:
| Archived link [pdf]:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20210414165446if_/http://media.a...
| danielschonfeld wrote:
| How is it that in the year 2021, visionary infrastructure project
| is investing in an old and slow rail network? Why can Dubai work
| on hyper loop and for us Amtrak is the best we can come up with?
|
| Maybe our politicians are a bit too old for the job of
| visionaries?
| WhompingWindows wrote:
| Hyperloop would be nice but it's not a proven technology.
| Amtrak already exists and could use improvement and
| maintenance. If Hyperloop is proven out in a more innovative
| place, I'm sure Americans will eventually get on board.
| bredren wrote:
| Is the prospect of some hyperloop implementation impacted by this
| plan?
| JohnJamesRambo wrote:
| https://media.amtrak.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Amtrak-C...
|
| The damn map from Amtrak goes to a 404. I wish we would just get
| some other company than Amtrak to implement the rail. I love the
| idea of rail, it's a shame that Amtrak is somehow incredibly more
| expensive than flying every time I check the prices.
| itspublic wrote:
| Congress could deregulate passenger rail and allow competition.
| Amtrak is a government monopoly. There's the chance that
| passenger rail isn't profitable and that it disappears but I've
| always thought that would be unlikely
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Put differently: it's a shame that as passengers we pay so
| little of the real cost of flying that train travel can appear
| expensive by comparison.
| ajcp wrote:
| Have you tried booking a ticket? It throws an unhandled error:
| "Cannot read property 'sysError' of undefined". Can't make this
| shit up.
| kilovoltaire wrote:
| Archived link [pdf]:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20210414165446if_/http://media.a...
| CyanLite4 wrote:
| Amtrak is far too slow to be relevant. Greyhound buses are
| faster. Renting a car and just driving yourself is nearly as
| efficient.
| okprod wrote:
| $80B isn't enough to overhaul US train infrastructure and all the
| related challenges, and I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of it
| ends up going to high-bid/low-result vendors. Other countries
| have had high speed rail for 10-50 years already.
| fallingknife wrote:
| $80B isn't enough to build a train from SF to LA apparently.
| gumby wrote:
| How many of these lines (particularly out west) involve laying
| new track? The article merely refers vaguely to "new rail
| corridors" which could equally be satisfied by using existing
| right of way.
|
| If there's new track, the paths chosen could be laid out to
| support subsequent high speed upgrades (or be high speed out the
| door, though I'm not sure enough money has been allocated).
|
| The denser network in the more densely settled east coast may not
| permit HSR at all (though Europe managed even in more densely
| populated areas).
| api wrote:
| It would be nice if this got built, but I will be shocked if it
| does. The only way it will happen is if we take a battering ram
| to a massive amount of red tape, NIMBY resistance, and car and
| airline industry lobbying.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| As evidenced by COVID, America is too dysfunctional to achieve
| this. China's advantage in this arena is that they are a mostly
| functioning autocracy and can ram through (literally) paths for
| a train where needed.
| 1cvmask wrote:
| The biggest hindrance is the environmental red tape and then
| the corruption. China has high speed trains from Shanghai to
| Beijing and that is roughly the distance of Chicago to NYC.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| All you need is a strong federal push.
|
| States aren't capable of building big infrastructure like
| this. Federal cash with federal strings attached is
| incredibly effective.
|
| Look at interstate highways as an example. Fairly standard
| overpass bridge replacements cost $50M. Project quality
| varies but stuff gets built mostly on time and with minimal
| corruption.
| marcinzm wrote:
| Federal push also bypasses some of the state level
| corruption and graft.
| ghaff wrote:
| You mean NIMBY resistance like using eminent domain to take a
| lot of people's property? It's certainly sometimes appropriate
| but there should rightly be a high bar.
| burlesona wrote:
| It's a good map, but it would be better if there were more dotted
| lines. Amtrak needs to be relieved of its obligation to run
| coast-to-coast money pit lines and focus on building up
| successful regional networks that can make money. Perhaps if it
| were allowed to do that for a generation, it would be able to
| gradually make some of the ends of healthy and profitable
| regional networks connect again.
| apostacy wrote:
| Consider that most regional airline routes to rural parts of
| the country are subsidized as well (and far more is spent on
| it). Most of Alaska would lose air service. Large chunks of
| Texas, Arizona, and Alabama would be cut off.
|
| I think we need to have a concept of essential rail service,
| like we have with road and air.
|
| These routes should have have any obligation to make money,
| because they provide a benefit to tax payers. Most
| infrastructure is just accepted as something that should be
| funded.
|
| Another reason these long distance routes should be left intact
| is because they are an important anchor for eventually
| expanding to high speed rail.
|
| China kept their unprofitable rural slow passenger routes into
| the distant corners of their country, and now they are
| converting them to high speed.
| burlesona wrote:
| China is an authoritarian state, so they can do any number of
| things that are strategic without worrying about popularity.
|
| In the US, at the federal level at least, rail has a serious
| popularity problem which makes it politically difficult to
| sustain. That problem is largely driven by the fact that
| outside of the northeast our rail service is a joke.
|
| If we want to have good quality rail across the country --
| which I would like to have, fwiw -- I think we'd get there
| faster by focusing on serving just a few places with very
| high quality rail that everyone else would actually want.
| Then we could gradually expand the system with concentrated
| investments that hit that quality bar. After a generation of
| that, we could have broadly popular rail with a high quality
| of service. Perhaps that could even include highly subsidized
| service to rural areas, in the same way we have intensely
| subsidized highway and postal services to such places today.
|
| But I think if we want to get there we need to start with a
| smaller goal of regional networks that are GOOD, so that
| people's perception of rail changes.
| lolsal wrote:
| I think you are 100% correct. Before I consider a train
| ride from coast to coast I need to see my large metropolis
| area implement local/regional lines that are good and
| useful. Optimize for my 80% use case, not my 20% use case!
| kevindong wrote:
| Functionally, the vast majority of the Amtrak network is
| already the rail equivalent of Essential Air Service (EAS,
| gov-subsidized passenger air routes). Including government
| subsidies on a large percentage on routes. The NEC is the
| only Amtrak route that makes any meaningful amount of profit.
|
| See last page of the FY 2019 annual report (Amtrak's FY 2019
| ended on Sep. 30, 2019; aka pre-pandemic): https://www.amtrak
| .com/content/dam/projects/dotcom/english/p...
| pessimizer wrote:
| Exactly what financial benefit could there be in isolating
| those networks from each other? Probably 2% of people taking a
| long line are taking it from end to end. In the case of the
| route that goes from Chicago to Los Angeles, via New Orleans,
| I'd be surprised if the number weren't more like 0.02%.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| That's actually because the TX Eagle via San Antonio or the
| SW Chief does that pair
| jessriedel wrote:
| Regardless of the feasibility of rail in the US, I cannot think
| of anything less forward-looking then continuing to sink public
| money into the particular company Amtrak.
| newsclues wrote:
| Have you experienced European rail?
| eplanit wrote:
| Yes, and the best of the best: Japan. But, the point is that
| we're taking about Amtrak -- have you experienced them?
|
| The odds of Amtrak pulling this off are near 0. They earned
| their poor reputation.
| newsclues wrote:
| I took a multi day trip on via rail.
|
| Also used high speed trains in Germany.
|
| I understand the resistance but there is no technical
| problem that prevents efficient passenger rail services in
| North America, we just need to do it.
| eplanit wrote:
| Oh, I'd love to see it. If we could accomplish a
| Shinkansen...!
|
| But again, with Amtrak's record, where does the
| confidence come from that they could pull it off? As is
| pointed out above, it has never really succeeded, and has
| been propped-up by the government its entire life.
| newsclues wrote:
| Government has a poor track record yet they continue to
| have confidence.
|
| Change leadership, change direction and continually
| improve.
| dangus wrote:
| Amtrak is perfectly fine. I've used it on overnight trips
| on the crummiest long distance services. Yeah, I mean, it's
| no European or Japanese or Chinese rail. But the idea that
| Amtrak can't do something just because they're Amtrak is
| ridiculous. They're a part of the federal government, the
| only thing that the federal government needs to do things
| is political will.
|
| This rail plan is 100% realistic because it appropriately
| de-emphasizes long distance rail that Amtrak is so infamous
| for.
|
| It targets expansion in very obviously lacking intercity
| regions. These new routes will be profitable for the
| government either directly or in lasting economic benefits.
| ghaff wrote:
| Yeah, the Northeast Corridor is fine. Would it be nice if
| Boston to DC wasn't an all-day trip? Sure. But the two
| halves of the route are very competitive with air travel
| and I'll take them over flying unless I'm connecting to
| another flight.
|
| I've also rarely taken other city pairs.
|
| What isn't practical except mostly as a one-off tourist
| thing for someone with lots of time is going Chicago to
| Seattle and similar routes or fantasies of drilling a
| tunnel through the Appalachians for a fast NY to Chicago
| run.
| betterunix2 wrote:
| Amtrak is not technically part of the federal government.
| It was set up as a private, for-profit corporation that
| is jointly owned by the government and the railroads
| whose passenger operations were turned over to Amtrak.
| The federal government's control over Amtrak is meant to
| end once Amtrak is able to operate independently, but
| Amtrak has never really been on a path to
| independent/profitable operations and will probably never
| get there.
|
| Amtrak's biggest challenge is that its service is
| inconvenient in most of the cities/towns it serves. For
| example, in Syracuse, NY, where Amtrak has 8 trains per
| day (four in each direction) that arrive at reasonably
| convenient times, the station is located on the outskirts
| of the city, far from the city center. Cleveland has the
| opposite problem: the station is near the downtown area,
| but all of the scheduled trains (4 per day, two in each
| direction) arrive between 1 am and 6 am. Where Amtrak is
| convenient to use (e.g. the NEC) it works reasonably well
| and is actually competitive with driving or flying.
| jessriedel wrote:
| Yes, much better, yet another reason why Amtrak needs to be
| razed to the ground.
| itspublic wrote:
| Amtrak is publicly owned. I'd personally love to see it
| privatized, but you phrased that like you think Amtrak is a
| private company that receives subsidies. It isn't, it's closer
| to the USPS model than that.
| betterunix2 wrote:
| Why single out Amtrak? It was set up to fail by the Nixon
| administration, it has never received the funding it needed to
| address the poor state of the equipment, stations, and ROW
| (i.e. NEC) it received at its inception, and most of its
| operations are on other railroads' ROW where there is little
| hope of upgrading lines for high-speed service (or even
| electrification). Either we should nationalize our railroads or
| we need to accept that Amtrak (or whatever company) is
| providing a public service that requires adequate public
| funding.
| OnlyOneCannolo wrote:
| ROW = right of way
|
| NEC = northeast corridor
| jessriedel wrote:
| I did not single out Amtrak. The topic of the article is
| Amtrak. It is a dysfunctional organization, and that does
| become less true if it's Nixon's fault.
| Someone1234 wrote:
| I feel like this deserves an explanation. Amtrak are
| underfunded, a political football, and have to run like a
| second class citizen on a large chunk of the US rail network,
| hardly issues of their own creation.
| [deleted]
| dangus wrote:
| This very article points out routes that rival all the airlines
| combined in terms of passenger volume.
|
| The article also points out that Amtrak purposefully invests as
| little as possible into the unprofitable long distance network,
| which seems to be exactly what you're asking for: to stop
| investing in Amtrak's archaic routes.
|
| The article also details a plan that focuses on profitable and
| popular intercity service. Routes like Cleveland - Columbus -
| Cincinnati that are a part of this plan are no-brainer
| expansions that will easily yield regional economic benefits.
|
| As you're aware, Amtrak _is_ the government. Any economic
| benefit they bring to a region goes right back to the
| government in the form of tax revenue. It should be obvious
| then that Amtrak itself doesn't need to be profitable for it to
| be a net positive investment.
|
| We don't expect our roads to be profitable and yet nobody
| questions whether highways are a "feasible" mode of transport.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Governor of Ohio torpedoed that route IIRC
| apostacy wrote:
| For some perspective, the federal government regularly funds
| highways to nowhere that nobody asked for or wants[1]
|
| Most regional airfields are bigger money sinks than Amtrak. The
| federal government subsidizeds up to $800 per passenger in some
| of the more rural air routes in Alaska.[2]
|
| Rail travel subsidies are a fraction of what the United States
| taxpayers spend on transportation. We have a concept of
| "essential" air and road travel subsidies, why not essential
| rail subsidies?
|
| Think of how great this arm of our transportation
| infrastructure could be if we shifted 10% of what we spend on
| regional airlines to rail transport.
|
| Other countries have clearly demonstrated that high speed rail
| works. And they don't spend nearly as much on infrastructure.
|
| And what is wrong with just having subsidized slow passenger
| service across the continent either? I assure you it is not too
| expensive compared to what we already spend, and I think it is
| very beneficial. I think that we should continue to maintain a
| fleet of long distance passenger trains and stations. Passenger
| trains can be an essential safety where other forms of travel
| are unavailable. We just take it for granted that the
| government should spend as much as it wants building roads
| everywhere, but we count every penny when it comes to passenger
| rail.
|
| [1]: https://usa.streetsblog.org/2020/12/23/meet-2020s-worst-
| high...
|
| [2]:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20120202212318/http://www.buses....
| jessriedel wrote:
| You seem to want to have a general car vs. train debate. You
| picked the wrong comment to reply to.
| teslaberry wrote:
| history repeats. young people will be naively led down a path of
| believing u.s. has the capability to build this. it doens't .
|
| the 'amtrack proposal' is a method of proposing how to steal
| funds.
|
| not to mention. trains for passenger travel simply cannot make
| sense when towns and suburbs are so spread out because of 70
| years of road building and development patterns allowing things
| to be so spread out.
|
| this isn't europe. if you want trains, start focussing on living
| patterns. they need to be far more dense. the u.s. couldnt' be
| more spread apart.
| konaraddi wrote:
| This would be awesome! These lines go through most states so does
| this require the cooperation of each state's government or does
| the federal government have the final say? If it's the latter,
| then it seems feasible.
| anticensor wrote:
| Federal government could intervene by stipulating that postal
| and police trains have priority, because postal service and
| enforcement of federal law are federal powers in USA.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Railroads haven't had mail contracts since 1970s
| stadium wrote:
| $165 billion seems quite low for nationals improvements.
|
| Seattle area is spending $54 billion just on a regional expansion
| of light rail and the cost had gone up considerably since then
| because of inflation and real estate pressure.
| https://www.constructiondive.com/news/seattle-area-light-rai...
|
| And is Amtrack even the right organization to lead this effort?
| The inaugural run of the NW corridor high speed line resulted in
| derailment with 3 deaths in 2017. Positive train control could
| have prevented the crash bit they didn't spend on that even
| though it was mandated by congress. The train was going 80mph in
| a 30mph zone with a tight curve.
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Washington_train_derail...
|
| It sounds warm and fuzzy and I would welcome high speed national
| rail, but the numbers and timeline don't add up.
| masklinn wrote:
| > Seattle area is spending $54 billion just on a regional
| expansion of light rail and the cost had gone up considerably
| since then because of inflation and real estate pressure.
| https://www.constructiondive.com/news/seattle-area-light-rai...
|
| TBF light rail, and urban construction in general, is extremely
| expensive (due to right of way, real-estate, complicated works,
| ...) and it doesn't really "scale out" as every urban project
| is its own little nugget of crap.
|
| When you're building thousands of miles of track, after a while
| you'll have a lot of experience which can get leveraged pretty
| much as-is.
|
| Not saying the plans here make sense, mind.
| Larrikin wrote:
| As nice as expanded rail travel would be between cities, there
| are a lot of cities that are set up for cars and I was
| disappointed there doesn't seem to be much if any money in
| Biden's plan for creation and expansion of subway lines.
|
| Even cities that have subway systems, they're in desperate need
| of new lines. Washington DC and Chicago spring to mind, since
| their systems could benefit greatly from simply adding an outer
| loop line. They both suffer from many lines where you have to go
| into the center to get back out again. The dream for the silver
| line was to connect the spokes in DC but I know of no real
| projects in Chicago. It would be a dream to have a map like this
| in Chicago[1]
|
| I'm glad that Musk's proposed line was chased out the state. The
| Blue line needed expansion to allow for express lines to the
| airport, importantly with a few stops in between like a better
| planned purple line. Chicago did NOT need a 20 dollar a trip
| vanity project train that only went from O'Hare to the loop so
| that tourists and the wealthy could have a convenient private
| line to avoid all the poors. [2]
|
| [1] http://www.gapersblock.com/detour/a_cta_map_for_2055/
|
| [2] https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/breaking/ct-biz-
| chicago-...
| dboreham wrote:
| My 2 closest stations are still a day's drive away.
| grecy wrote:
| And that statement is true for > 100 million Chinese. But that
| doesn't mean the Chinese high speed rail system is not an
| immense success that benefits a huge percentage of the
| population!
| GhostVII wrote:
| I don't get the point of all those cross-country routes, isn't
| air travel both faster and cheaper once you are going long
| distance? I mean I would love to cross the country by rail for
| entertainment, but as a common method of travel it doesn't seem
| to make much sense. It works well in Europe because it is both
| much denser than the US, and also subsidized.
| hh3k0 wrote:
| > I don't get the point of all those cross-country routes,
| isn't air travel both faster and cheaper once you are going
| long distance?
|
| It's also an absolute atrocity in the face of climate change.
|
| And it's long overdue that fact is reflected in the ticket
| price, imo.
| akg_67 wrote:
| Air travel, That's how you create flyover states.
| ghaff wrote:
| And by and large, people _don 't_ take trains for Chicago to
| Seattle type distances in Europe. That's further than the
| distance from Paris to Moscow.
| sofixa wrote:
| > That's further than the distance from Paris to Moscow.
|
| Which has, in regular times, a weekly service by the Russian
| railways. And it passes through Belarus, and ends in Russia,
| countries for which you need visas and aren't necessarily the
| friendliest. If that service makes sense, Chicago-Seattle
| certainly could ( as an experience, cheap travel, etc.)
| pessimizer wrote:
| Of course, there _is_ a Paris to Moscow train. The thing
| about the coast to coast train routes in the US and the Paris
| to Moscow train is that you 're not in any way required to
| take the entire trip - there are stations along the way.
| ghaff wrote:
| I guess I picked a bad example in that, to my surprise,
| there is a direct train for that route--although it still
| takes about a day and a half. But I could certainly pick a
| lot of city pairs in Europe that are 1-2K miles apart that
| would be anything but efficient to travel by rail.
| CydeWeys wrote:
| Well, let's hear some. You're probably gonna want to
| limit yourself to city pairs that have multiple direct
| daily flights though, as anything less won't have enough
| demand to merit a direct convenient train route either.
| ghaff wrote:
| Without making a research project out of it:
|
| - Rome to Athens
|
| - Paris to Barcelona
|
| - Madrid to Stockholm
|
| Much of Europe is a very far way from having a seamless
| integrated cross-border train system.
| vinay427 wrote:
| Paris to Barcelona does actually exist:
| https://en.oui.sncf/en/train/timetables/paris/barcelona
|
| The next direct train takes 6h39m.
| gsnedders wrote:
| It is, I believe, the second longest passenger train in
| Europe. (The longest is a similar Nice-Moscow service.)
|
| But both are weekly services, and even Nice-Moscow (yet
| alone intermediate stops) has more capacity most days by
| plane than the once-a-week train.
| apostacy wrote:
| These long distance routes should be left intact because they
| are an important anchor for eventually expanding to high
| speed rail.
|
| China kept their unprofitable rural slow passenger routes
| into the distant corners of their country, and now they are
| converting them to high speed routes.
|
| The Beijing-Guangzhou high-speed line is 2,298km long, and
| used to be 22 hours but now runs in 8[1]
|
| Being able to go from Penn Station in Manhattan to Union
| Station in Chicago in 8 hours in a comfortable train would be
| a serious alternative to air travel, and once the track is
| upgraded, it would probably be cheaper than existing service.
| And this is completely doable with decades old technology.
| Other countries have done comparable things with less.
|
| I don't think we should abandon "legacy" routes just because
| they are not profitable right now. And even if they are never
| profitable that alone is not a good enough reason to abandon
| infrastructure.
|
| [1]: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-20842836
| T-hawk wrote:
| Note that New York to Chicago by Amtrak is so slow largely
| because there's no direct route. You either take the Great
| Lakes route going through Albany, Buffalo, and Cleveland,
| or the northeast corridor route to Washington DC and then
| another line to Chicago. The more direct Keystone line
| through Pennsylvania only goes as far as Harrisburg.
| apostacy wrote:
| I think the absolute time and distance is what matters,
| and it would still substantially benefit from being high
| speed, even if it is meandering through upstate NY and
| along the great lakes.
|
| Eventually, a more direct NY - Chicago high speed rail
| route could be built that is even faster.
| OldHand2018 wrote:
| You'll notice that there is a Detroit to Toronto line on
| that map. It's not an accident. Chicago to Detroit has
| been running at 110mph for 80+% of the distance for
| almost 10 years now. The rail tunnel under the Detroit
| River already exists.
|
| You just need a fast NYC to Buffalo with a little
| extension on to Hamilton, ON and you've got a very direct
| NYC to Chicago route.
| bbanyc wrote:
| They'd need to do something about the hour-long stop at
| the border for CBP and its Canadian equivalent to go
| through the train checking everyone's passports. Decades
| ago I ran into it on the now-defunct Chicago-Toronto line
| and I'm pretty sure it's why they don't run those trains
| anymore. The New York-Toronto and New York-Montreal
| trains still do it.
|
| Seattle-Vancouver avoids it by not making any stops
| between Vancouver and the border, so the immigration
| checks take place at the station. This might be feasible
| for Montreal, probably not for Toronto, and a train that
| runs from Buffalo to Detroit without stopping in Canada
| at all seems implausible.
| mjmahone17 wrote:
| Could probably set it up to do checks on departure. End
| up in the wrong country without your passport? Just take
| the next train back to the last destination in the other
| country.
|
| Would likely need a special treaty in place so Americans
| traveling from Chicago to NY can travel through without a
| passport (just ID). Alternatively if we're talking
| diplomatic solutions, the US and Canada could move
| towards a Schengen-style free transit zone without cross
| country border checks.
| mattm wrote:
| > Could probably set it up to do checks on departure
|
| There's a seaplane from Victoria-Seattle. It's been a few
| years since I took it but I believe this is what
| happened. There's a custom agent at each side. I can't
| remember if there were any checks before departure
| though. I would imagine they would do some preliminary
| check because they don't want to be on the hook for
| taking you back.
|
| Shortest custom wait ever BTW since the plane only holds
| 10-15 people.
|
| > US and Canada could move towards a Schengen-style free
| transit zone without cross country border checks
|
| This would be a dream. I'm curious why I've never really
| heard any proposal about this. As a Canadian (currently
| living in the US), I think that Canada would be more
| opposed to this. We always seem to have a fear of the US
| amalgamating us. I think it'd be politically tricky on
| both sides though. Even though it was proven to be false,
| there's still this myth that the 9/11 hijackers entered
| the US through Canada.
| vinay427 wrote:
| > As a Canadian (currently living in the US), I think
| that Canada would be more opposed to this. We always seem
| to have a fear of the US amalgamating us.
|
| If it helps, Switzerland joined the Schengen area while
| maintaining its own customs controls (with reasonably
| consistent enforcement) and autonomy on immigration
| policy (outside of temporary tourist travel which is
| mostly harmonized). Major policy unification isn't
| necessary, although the minimum feasible level is likely
| still unprecedented for the US and Canada.
| ghaff wrote:
| And the other part of the problem is that you're going
| through a continental divide. Prior to air travel, I
| assume NY to Chicago was a major route so there may be
| good reasons for why the routing is as it is.
| calvinmorrison wrote:
| 100 years ago there were many routes! I hate that the
| rails have failed, taking a train between Philly,
| Reading, Allentown, and Scranton makes so much sense!
| ghaff wrote:
| Yes, but the 20th Century Limited flagship of the New
| York Central Railroad [1] actually did follow the current
| Lake Shore Limited route. I suspect that there are
| geographic factors that limit a more direct route.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/20th_Century_Limited
| meristohm wrote:
| Noise pollution is a big reason I prefer trains.
| oceanplexian wrote:
| The laws of physics are clear that trying to push a vehicle
| through standard atmosphere is always going to be less
| efficient than one operating in a low-friction or near-vacuum
| environment. Scrap inefficient airport security for higher tech
| solutions, and start building hydrogen-powered supersonic
| aircraft and high speed rail is toast.
| freeone3000 wrote:
| Ideally, people in Minnesota would also want to go to North
| Dakota. There's ideally some station-to-station ridership,
| these aren't express routes.
| Stasis5001 wrote:
| I started looking at the map in the article and realized I had
| just booked a flight where there was an existing rail line ! So
| I checked out the Amtrak site, and what's 1h20m by plane is
| 14h40m by train -- and 8h by car. Maybe by getting a sleeper
| cabin I could have had an enjoyable trip by train, but as the
| trip scales things get dramatically worse.
|
| Of course, maybe this is exactly what the future of
| transportation should look like: more localized travel on modes
| that can be powered by renewable sources or nuclear.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| I travel form Chicago to Detroit pretty regularly. The train
| takes 4.5 hours, driving takes 4, and flying takes 1.5.
| Flying ends up being the slowest though because you have to
| spend 1.5 getting too and from the airport plus waiting at
| the airport. The train costs $25 which is cheaper than
| driving and I get to get work done. It's by far the best
| option imo.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| It's a mixed bag, really.
|
| Compare the journey from my small village in New Mexico to
| Chicago, about 1200 miles. We just happen to have an Amtrak
| station 5 miles away. The drive time is about 18-20 hours
| without stops, which is long enough that an overnight stop is
| going to be likely. The flight time is only about 3 hours,
| but that requires first driving 40-70 minutes to the airport,
| spending time waiting in the airport, and then arriving at
| O'Hare, and then the 50 min metro journey back into the city.
|
| The Southwest Chief, however, arrives here around lunch time,
| and arrives in Chicago about 24 hours later.
|
| If you were optimizing for minimum travel time, you'd
| probably fly. If you were optimizing for cost, you'd probably
| drive. But if you want a nice journey, the train is fantastic
| and faster than driving if you're going to stop.
|
| So, there are variations on the theme, and sometimes the
| train wins, sometimes the train loses.
| dreamcompiler wrote:
| I love the Lamy-to-Chicago train. I've taken it several
| times. You get to sleep through Kansas (where there's
| nothing to see anyway; no offense to Kansans!) and you wake
| up crossing the Mississippi River. There's 110v power and
| cell service for most of the trip.
|
| (I always get a sleeper; without that it wouldn't be
| worthwhile.)
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Good guess at Lamy! But it could have been Las Vegas or
| Raton too :)
|
| Are you close by?
| brandonmenc wrote:
| > If you were optimizing for minimum travel time, you'd
| probably fly. If you were optimizing for cost, you'd
| probably drive. But if you want a nice journey, the train
| is fantastic and faster than driving if you're going to
| stop.
|
| Train fans vastly overestimate the number of people who
| will optimize for "sitting in a train and staring out the
| window for days".
| ghaff wrote:
| Especially given that, if it's business travel, I expect
| a lot of companies aren't that big on you adding a couple
| days of travel time because you feel like taking the
| train.
|
| In the case of the parent's scenario, it seems pretty
| reasonable in that you're really only talking about maybe
| an additional half day of travel. But that's probably
| about the upper limit.
| anaerobicover wrote:
| > optimize for "sitting in a train and staring out the
| window for days".
|
| I'm acknowledging that it's not for everyone, but that's
| not really a fair depiction. I get a lot of work done on
| a train -- the atmosphere is similar to a coffee shop in
| some ways. Other people enjoy going to the common car and
| chatting and playing cards with strangers. Or reading. Or
| just watching Netflix on their devices, like they'd
| probably be doing at home anyways. We were also talking
| about an overnight trip, not "days".
| jpindar wrote:
| OTOH, how many of us sometimes happily sit in a chair and
| stare at a screen for days?
| slacka wrote:
| I lived in China for 2 years. Americans have no idea how
| liberating it is to be able be able to hop on a 200 mph train
| and arrive at totally different climate in hours. Over lunch,
| my coworkers would talk about a weekend of drinking tea in
| mountains in Hunan, visiting Mao' home in Wuhan, or exploring
| the beaches of Hainan. These are all things we did and were
| possible because of China's high speed rail system.
|
| I think the biggest factor was the convenience. We'd just show
| up at the train station and take the next train, usually within
| an hour. No planning, no booking, just bought our tickets at
| the station, minutes before our trip. All of this for less than
| 1/4 the cost of a last minute plane ticket.
|
| Sure we could have flown, and the farthest places _may_ have
| been faster to fly. But that only if the tickets were available
| and security lines in china are just as bad as here. There 's
| also the comfort of a train with a meal coach. And, the thrill
| of watching the land rush by at lightning speeds. America felt
| so backwards on my return.
| WanderPanda wrote:
| You seem to have enjoyed your trip on back of millions of
| workers who will never witness the same despite paying for it
| with their sweat and blood.
| yorwba wrote:
| Hainan is an island and while a tunnel is planned, the
| current solution is to ship the rail cars across in a ferry,
| which creates a bottleneck and makes the line not that fast
| overall. But it's still pretty convenient, especially if you
| consider that for most people the alternative wouldn't be a
| plane but a car, which has the same difficulty crossing the
| strait. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guangdong%E2%80%93Haina
| n_railw...
| hanniabu wrote:
| We wouldn't be getting 200mph trains though
| jessaustin wrote:
| It might be instructive to imagine what would have to
| change about USA to allow 200mph trains. (real ones, not
| hypothetical BS like Elon's tubes)
| imtringued wrote:
| Elon musk promised 155mph for the LA tunnel. In reality
| you are down to 40mph. Off by 4x. If Elon Musk promises
| 800mph in the Hyperloop expect to cut off 75% off that so
| its back to 200mph. Why even bother? It's not like he has
| any special insight, the only thing he has is the ability
| to throw money at random projects.
|
| The only things Elon Musk does well are incremental
| improvements over existing technology, that's not a bad
| thing but he always throws out bullshit promises that he
| can do it 10x cheaper or fares only cost one dollar.
| fireattack wrote:
| Agreed.
|
| However, I think there is another issue in the US: last mile
| transit.
|
| Even if the US magically have the rail system similar to
| China today, using it in cities like Houston etc. that has
| poor public transit would still be a pain in the ass in
| practice.
| ghaff wrote:
| It's another reason (besides density) why the Northeast
| Corridor works pretty well for rail. The biggest cities
| (Boston, NYC, Philadelphia, DC) have pretty good transit
| systems and the train dumps you downtown which will often
| be where you want to be.
|
| Houston is arguably a particularly bad example. But there
| are a lot of cities where you pretty much need a car if you
| want to be at all mobile.
| GhostVII wrote:
| I think that for shorter distances, like LA to SF to Seattle
| that would be great. But I don't think any of the rail lines
| in China are comparable to going from Chicago to Seattle -
| that is a huge distance to build a high speed rail line on,
| and there is almost nothing in between that people would want
| to stop at.
| alisonatwork wrote:
| There are several "trains to nowhere" in China. High speed
| rail is already active between Lanzhou (Gansu) and Urumqi
| (Xinjiang), which is 1500km of pretty empty countryside.
| They're talking about linking in Lhasa (Tibet) too. I can't
| imagine any of those routes will be profitable, but perhaps
| the income from the coastal provinces makes up the
| difference.
|
| I suspect in China there is more political incentive to
| connect these far-flung provinces, though, to try to
| promote national unity. I'm not sure closing the gap
| between the PNW and "middle America" is considered quite as
| important by people in DC.
| treeman79 wrote:
| California has been trying and failing to build a high
| speed rail system. So far it's only good at making a lot of
| people rich and being worthless.
| alisonatwork wrote:
| If you were living in a place in China where you could just
| show up and catch a high speed train, you were very lucky!
|
| My experience living in China is that for high speed rail
| departing from tier one and tier two cities, you would often
| need to book a ticket a day in advance, or - if you were
| winging it - be willing to go to somewhere other than your
| intended destination. And foreigners cannot get their tickets
| through the machine like people with Chinese ID card can, so
| that means waiting 30-45 minutes in the line to get your
| ticket (even if you booked online), before you even go
| through security, which is another 15-20 minutes. And if you
| show up at the main concourse 5 minutes before the train
| leaves, you will be denied access to the platform due to the
| airport-like boarding procedure. As such, I always had to
| calculate arriving at the dedicated high speed train station
| (usually itself 30+ minutes bus or subway ride out of the
| center of town) with at least an hour to spare.
|
| It is still far less hassle than taking a flight, but it's
| not comparable to the real spontaneous opportunities of going
| by bus/coach or slow train (hard seat). With those forms of
| travel you really can just show up at a nearby station and go
| wherever, with little to no pre-planning and less stressful
| security checks. But then it will take hours to go halfway
| across the province. Of course, for many Chinese, that is the
| standard mode of travel, because high speed rail is still
| fairly expensive by comparison.
|
| All that said... Pretty much everything about traveling by
| rail in China is better than it is in America. But traveling
| by rail in Europe is the gold standard, I think. Being able
| to buy tickets from a machine, not show photo ID anywhere (in
| the Schengen area at least), just step on and step off,
| that's real freedom of movement.
| natch wrote:
| And the fast trains are made even better because of the
| complementary system of slow trains, which because they have
| many stops at smaller places along the way, eliminate the
| need for fast trains to have too-frequent stops.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| I completely agree with you in the abstract, and would
| happily never fly cross country again, but I'm worried
| Amtrak's map is a sign that want to do middling incremental
| improvements everywhere that don't reach that inflection
| point.
|
| See https://pedestrianobservations.com/2021/03/20/streaming-
| high... for a much less exciting map, but one for which u
| have more confidence Amtrak could actually pull it off.
|
| I rather they do the crazy fun cross country routes after
| that. America needs to demonstrate it's serious about
| urbanism before I take any cross country lines crayoning
| seriously.
| cbm-vic-20 wrote:
| One of the (many) problems with Amtrak is that they pretend
| they're an airline. Booking well in advance is the only way
| to get a good rate, "walk up" prices are pretty high. I
| mostly have experience with the Northeast Corridor, and this
| is the baseline level of service that we need nationwide.
| I've been on some of the other routes, and the quality of the
| service on those lines pales in comparison.
|
| That said, the route from NYC to Montreal is really beautiful
| north of Albany. It just takes about ten hours to get there.
| ghaff wrote:
| >Booking well in advance is the only way to get a good
| rate, "walk up" prices are pretty high
|
| In all fairness, that's pretty true in a lot of places. It
| certainly is in the UK in my experience. I'd actually have
| said at least the Acela isn't particularly onerous in this
| regard.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| This was true in Denmark last I was there. You could buy
| an "orange" ticket online, well in advance, for a
| significant discount, which I used for a planned trip
| into Copenhagen from Jutland.
| alkonaut wrote:
| Rule #1 of travel pricing is you can't risk charging too
| little for business travel because they subsidize the price
| conscious travellers. Leaving on an earlier train because a
| meeting ends early is exactly the kind of thing business
| travellers pay good money for. But that's also
| indiatinguishable from this kind of random walk in travel
| that leisure travellers would love to see - so it can't
| happen. If you want business travellers to pay 3x for that
| convenience you can't give it to everyone for less than
| that.
| VWWHFSfQ wrote:
| > It just takes about ten hours to get there.
|
| This is just always going to be the problem. It's ok for
| some mild entertainment but it's not viable for regular
| travel. A flight to Montreal is like an hour and probably
| half the price.
| mgbmtl wrote:
| It's an international flight, so the price is more
| expensive relative to a flight between two US cities.
| Usually it's 300 USD to fly compared to 140 USD by rail.
|
| Two things to keep in mind by rail to Montreal: customs
| add 1h, and in summer, if the rails are too hot, per
| Canadian regulations, the train cannot go faster than
| 50km/hour or something ridiculously slow like that, which
| adds another hour or two. Onboard wifi only works when in
| the US, and because of the mountains in upstate NY, the
| signal can be very flaky and slow.
| mjmahone17 wrote:
| It's a little absurd that a trip of less than 400 miles
| takes 11 hours on a train. That's a terrible average
| speed.
|
| With pretty reasonable high speed rail, that should be no
| more than a 4 hour trip. At which point it is very
| competitive with flying in terms of time.
|
| For cost, it looks like a round trip on Amtrak is
| typically $200, whereas a round trip flight for two weeks
| from now is around $300.
| bsanr2 wrote:
| Even now it really depends on where your priorities lie.
| Going from Rhode Island to Maryland or back, I had to
| arrive at least an hour and a half (more like 2 hours)
| before takeoff to get through parking and security. That
| meant leaving the house 2-3 hours before takeoff. Then, a
| 2-hour flight, and another hour and a half dealing with
| baggage and transport home. That two-hour flight was more
| like 6 hours of my day, a majority of it spent in
| uncomfortable settings (driving, in the security line, in
| a cramped plane seat). Compare to Amtrak: 30 minutes to
| the closest station, and I can arrive immediately before
| boarding; 7 hours on the train, but in fairly spacious
| seats, with free WiFi, and then 20 minutes home from the
| station.
|
| I much preferred the relatively relaxed nature of train
| travel, and it only bit out an extra hour or two of my
| day. With high speed rail it wouldn't even be a contest.
| jwcacces wrote:
| Flying used to be like this. I'm from Long Island and I went
| to college in the Boston area. I remember you could buy a
| book of delta shuttle tickets (~$100 / fight, book of 5) and
| show up and use them whenever you'd like, last minute, with
| no security hassle or whatever. You could also use the same
| tickets to go to DC if you wanted. Just stay on the plane for
| the next leg.
| crusty wrote:
| I kind of wish I wasn't contributing to the topic
| tangent/hijack, but whatever...
|
| Hawaii's interisland flights probably most closely resemble
| this air travel experience. Aside from Sunday & Friday
| fares that have a $30 premium due to work-week commuters,
| currently current week tickets are $49 and next week and
| beyond tickets are $39. And if you want to believe that's
| just a covid effect, there was a $29 special going last
| year right before covid.
|
| Pair the process with chill, small-ish airports* and the
| hassle of flying is about as low as it gets for controlled
| commercial air travel.
|
| Years ago, it used to be the norm to Judy show up 10 or 15
| minutes before the flight.
|
| * Obviously Honolulu is an exception, but it does have a
| separate interisland terminal.
| ghaff wrote:
| Pre-Acela and the electrification of the line north of New
| Haven that came with it, the only real reason you'd take
| the train from Boston to NY (much less points south) was to
| save money. When I was in school in the Boston area, when I
| went home to the Philadelphia area, I'd take the train for
| longer vacations but would fly for 4-day weekends.
| andreimackenzie wrote:
| Arriving at Penn Station has benefits if you're traveling
| for business. Hailing a ride to get to an office within
| 15 minutes beats the long ride to get downtown from one
| of the NYC airports.
| ghaff wrote:
| Yeah, none of the NYC airports are particularly
| convenient. And I'm actually usually in midtown, often on
| the west side, so I can just walk from Penn to my hotel.
| (And Penn may actually stop being its dingy self one of
| these days.)
| CydeWeys wrote:
| > (And Penn may actually stop being its dingy self one of
| these days.)
|
| That's kind of already happened. The Moynihan Train Hall
| just opened up recently. I checked it out recently and
| it's quite nice, certainly much nicer than the old Penn
| Station. The next time you're getting off in NYC, walk
| towards the back of the train you came in on and then go
| up to the surface, and you'll be exiting in Moynihan
| instead of Penn.
| ghaff wrote:
| I haven't been in NYC for close to a couple years at this
| point. Some of the renovation work around the LIRR
| entrances was done but not anything else. I'll definitely
| check out next time I'm there. The drawings for the
| continuing renovation look quite nice too.
| csense wrote:
| Now that we're finally pulling out of Afghanistan and done
| with the War on Terror, it's time to disband DHS / TSA and
| put things back to how they used to be.
|
| I think it's kinda weird how very few politicians are
| talking about this.
| mncharity wrote:
| Nod. Pre-9/11 peak deregulation had $40 flights BOS-NYC.
| I'd run from Boston subway, to a quick direct shuttle bus,
| then through the doors, across the small lobby, with staff
| yelling at me... "Run faster!" they'd shout, mostly with a
| smile. Down the ramp without stopping, sliding through the
| closing aircraft door. Flight attendants later walking the
| rows, collecting two twenties from everyone. Here in a
| multiply dystopian future... sigh.
| jen20 wrote:
| > I don't get the point of all those cross-country routes,
|
| Same. I10 is pointless - no-one drives from Santa Monica to
| Jacksonville - flying is much faster once you're going long
| distance. I mean I would love to cross the country by car for
| entertainment, but as a common method of travel it doesn't seem
| to make much sense.
|
| /sarcasm (for those who need it pointing out...)
|
| Cross country rail lines are just like cross-country
| interstates: mostly used by people for specific regional
| connectivity.
| kolinko wrote:
| Cross country - perhaps not. But, living in Europe, I see many
| people chhosing a train for 4-5h over 1-1.5h flight.
|
| For 1,5h flight you end up wasting 3-4h anyway because you need
| to get to the airport etc, and out of those 3-4h most of the
| time you can't do anything productive or relaxing either. With
| 5h train you can either relax or work and it's much more
| productive. Also less co2 produced ofc.
|
| And that's with "slow" trains going 100mph. With faster trains
| as in France or Japan even more airplane rides are unnecessary
| dehrmann wrote:
| I think most of this demand is already covered by the popular
| Northeast Corridor. It should absolutely be upgraded, but
| outside of it, I think everything's either too small or too
| far to effectively compete with air travel.
| ghaff wrote:
| There definitely are city pairs or maybe triplets here and
| there. North Carolina was mentioned somewhere upthread.
| I've actually taken Amtrak from Raleigh to Charlotte. Could
| just walk to the station from downtown Raleigh. Did need a
| cab at the other end to get to downtown Charlotte but it
| was closer than the airport.
|
| I know people take the train between Seattle and Portland.
| I'm sure there are other examples.
| jcranmer wrote:
| There are four main regions that have viable HSR outside of
| the NEC. These are:
|
| * The CA region (SF/Bay Area/Sacramento/LA/Las
| Vegas/Phoenix).
|
| * Texas triangle
|
| * France TGV-like lines in the Midwest, centered on
| Chicago, connecting to Minneapolis (via Milwaukee), St.
| Louis, Detroit, Cleveland, maybe Indianapolis, Columbus,
| Cincinnati
|
| * New England/New York outside of the NEC--that is,
| Toronto-Boston and Montreal-New York with timed transfers
| at Albany.
| manacit wrote:
| I would probably add Vancouver, BC -> Seattle -> Portland
| to that list, but I think that's probably right. The
| thing is, if we actually added viable rail to all of
| those cities mentioned, it would be a huge swath of the
| country, without needing to build a 200mph train through
| Wyoming.
|
| Right now there are ~40 flights a day that go from PDX-
| SEA or SEA-PDX. Those are a waste of airport capacity and
| carbon emission. Both cities have the transit network to
| easily get people to the airport from wherever the HSR
| ends up for people who are using those flights to make
| connections, and could promote growth in the aggregate
| area in a way that doesn't exist now.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Did that a couple of years ago to go from Glasgow to London.
| Almost exactly the journey times you mention. Bought a ticket
| the same day as I travelled. It wasn't cheap, but was cheaper
| than same-day flight tickets. No airport stress, and ended up
| back in the middle of London, not at some ex-urban or
| suburban airport with another 35-60 minute journey into town.
| Angostura wrote:
| If a country is serious about reducing CO2 emissions, it should
| be serious about moving people from plain to train, if
| possible. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-
| environment-49349566
| lacker wrote:
| This is a very "political" map. Many of these routes are only
| in there so that every state is included. (Except South Dakota
| who complained about being left out!) A lot of parts, like the
| route from Minnesota west to Washington, only really make sense
| in that light. If this were closer to being a real proposal for
| what to build, I think the map would look a lot different. This
| is more like a symbol to hopefully kick off a discussion.
| beowulfey wrote:
| This is almost certainly built on existing rail corridors
| though too. I think _priority_ of upgrades will follow your
| thinking, but these lines weren't drawn entirely randomly.
| ris wrote:
| > and also subsidized
|
| Name a form of transport that isn't subsidized.
| danans wrote:
| In many places, walking and biking.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| I don't pay to walk or bike anywhere where I live, it was
| all built with tax dollars. Where are you that walkers and
| bikers pay for their infrastructure?
| tinus_hn wrote:
| Even if there is no government and no infrastructure, you
| can still walk. We have had men walk on the moon!
| beowulfey wrote:
| Well... that was also thanks to the government. Although
| moreso for the getting there.
| lbotos wrote:
| > Where are you that walkers and bikers pay for their
| infrastructure?
|
| > Where I live, it was all built with tax dollars.
|
| You answered your own question, and, you paid for it too!
| myself248 wrote:
| Not everyone optimizes for fast or cheap. Some prioritize
| comfort, or scenery, or not-being-in-an-airplane for whatever
| reason.
|
| Some really enjoy getting off at one stop for a while, and
| getting on the next train and continuing the journey. Or just
| deciding that this place looks nice, and getting off here. Try
| that in an airplane...
|
| There's a growing niche of transoceanic travel by container-
| ship and bulk freighter, too. It's neither cheap nor fast, and
| that's the point. It's truly unplugged, where the journey is
| part of the destination.
|
| Throughout the entirety of human history except the last
| hundred years or so, long distance travel has been a
| borderline-boring activity. Maybe that's not such a bad thing
| -- our brains need some downtime to reflect and defrag. We're
| just starting to appreciate en masse that "monotonous" can be
| kissing-close to "meditative". Rail is part of that, and as
| people catch onto that, it's making a comeback.
| peckrob wrote:
| Frankly, even as poor as our rail infrastructure is, there's
| still a lot to be said for train travel.
|
| A couple years my wife and I went Birmingham to New Orleans
| for $150 round trip on Amtrak. Airfare on the same route was
| $600, and I would have paid $150 in parking alone in downtown
| New Orleans. Moreover, the time difference between train,
| driving or flying was not all that different. The train was
| scheduled at seven hours, about the same as driving time with
| stops. And air travel would have been about the same once you
| factor in getting to the airport early, two flights with a
| layover in Atlanta, and getting from the airport to downtown.
|
| It's also a whole heck of a lot more pleasant than flying.
| 50" of seat pitch, width of a first class seat, hot food,
| alcohol, plenty of room to walk around, interesting people to
| talk to, no needless security theater, no need to get to the
| station 30 minutes early, no need to worry about baggage fees
| or weights.
|
| Before the pandemic hit, we were planning on doing the Empire
| Builder from Chicago to Portland. For the three of us (me,
| wife, daughter) in a bedroom was $1100. Expensive, but
| factoring in transportation, room and food for 2.5 days for
| 3, it's not a bad deal. And you get to sit back, watch the
| scenery, read, nap, etc.
|
| I mean yeah, if I need to travel across the country quickly,
| an airplane will always win. But airlines have seemingly gone
| out of their way over the last 20 years to make flying as
| miserable as possible to squeeze every cent out of customers.
| If I can afford to take some time and the train is an option,
| I will always choose the train based solely on it being less
| miserable than flying has become.
| 7thaccount wrote:
| Was also researching a sleeper car for a family of 3 before
| the Pandemic. I've only been on a train once before besides
| work trips in DC (use the metro a bit), so it's a little
| out of the blue for me, but perhaps it could be making a
| comeback
| tzs wrote:
| I think it may be like an elevator.
|
| About 15 years ago, I had to spend a little over 3 weeks in
| Beaumont, Texas, for work, leaving Beaumont just before
| Thanksgiving. I dislike flying and wasn't paying for the trip
| and had never taken a train, so asked to take Amtrak.
|
| My train trip was from the Tacoma, Washington Amtrak station to
| the Beaumont station and back, via the Los Angeles, California,
| station. It's a 3 day trip each way, and so on the return trip
| I was traveling on Thanksgiving day.
|
| Pretty much every stop that day had a ton of people getting on
| and a ton of people getting off, often whole families. They
| were all just taking the train to the town a few stops down the
| line to get together with family from the neighboring towns for
| the holiday, and then return the next time a train going the
| other direction came through (trains came through each way
| three days a week on that segment).
|
| So yeah, it may not make sense to have a cross-country route if
| you just consider people who are traveling from one of the
| route to the other, just like an elevator does not make sense
| in many buildings when you just consider the volume of
| passengers traveling between the penthouse and the bottom of a
| five level underground parking garage.
|
| But just like an elevator between that deep garage and the
| penthouse is also an elevator between every other pair of
| floors, a cross-country train route is also a route between
| every pair of stops between the ends.
| stuaxo wrote:
| Exactly - just like with roads.
| kgin wrote:
| Some of the new additions would have a ton of ridership, even if
| the trains weren't particularly high speed. Los Angeles to Las
| Vegas, Nashville to Atlanta are the two that jump out to me.
| treis wrote:
| For Nashville to Atlanta driving is going to be cheaper and way
| more convenient. Plus you're likely to need a car anyways at
| your destination. Few people are going to choose the train.
|
| This inexplicable fascination with trains is frustrating to
| watch. They're expensive to build and aren't comprehensive
| solutions. The first thing that needs to be done is to get
| people off of cars. The easiest way to do that is dump a bunch
| of money into on demand ad hoc shuttle bus size transport. Make
| public transport convenient and people will use it. If people
| use it then they will support it and cities will naturally
| build to depend on it.
|
| Edit:To illustrate the problem, I live about a mile from the
| center of downtown Atlanta. To get to the Amtrak station would
| require a bus, transfer to the subway, and transfer to another
| bus. It would take an hour to get to the station 6 miles away.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| > Plus you're likely to need a car anyways at your
| destination. Few people are going to choose the train.
|
| Yep, this is a key problem in the USA. Even if you build an
| amazing regional rail system, the nature of what's at each
| end of most journeys will still push people toward cars far
| too much of the time.
| jfim wrote:
| One could say the same for airports though. The solution to
| that is either car rentals or better public transit.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| True. I was thinking more of journeys in the 3-24hrs by
| train range, where flying is less likely to be an option,
| but driving is.
| redblacktree wrote:
| At that point, just walk. At a comfortable pace, you'd be
| there in 80 minutes, and you'd have your exercise for the
| day.
| ghaff wrote:
| With luggage, in a city that is hot and humid for a decent
| chunk of the year. More realistically, you're going to
| catch a cab/Uber.
| anaerobicover wrote:
| I am a big proponent of walking to get around, but 6 miles
| in 80 minutes is closer to a jog than "a comfortable
| walking pace". Typical walking speed is 16-20 minutes/mile,
| and that's without carrying anything.
| spothedog1 wrote:
| While I agree with what you said can't these things be done
| in tandem? There is a lot of working being done in almost
| every major city to make them more public transit and
| pedestrian friendly. That work needs to be done by the city
| and county governments. Amtrak is federal. Amtrak should def
| work with local governments on station location and design to
| make sure they're convenient and accessible with local
| transit.
|
| Nashville <-> Atlanta is 4 hours and a lot of people
| (including me) just hate driving for long distances like
| that. It's dangerous and boring. While yes you might need a
| car to fill your last mile obligations if you're not going
| too far outside city limits ride shares like Uber and Lyft
| can fill that hole.
| treis wrote:
| Because money, political capital, organizational resources,
| etc. is mostly a zero sum game. Effort spent on rail is
| effort not being spent on solving the most pressing
| problem. And at least in my locality the money and focus is
| on rail.
|
| I'm pretty dubious about the demand. There's not even a
| megabus between Nashville and Atlanta.
| spothedog1 wrote:
| Hmm I gotta disagree with that. While yes they are 0sum
| they are totally different organizations operating these
| things. If Atlanta DOT isn't improving their local
| transit networks it's not because they're focusing on
| Nashville rail connections.
|
| I'll give you the demand aspect sure, but a 2.5 hour link
| between dense downtown Atlanta and Nashville business
| districts can also become a catalyst for increased
| demand. Depends how much cost goes into the project.
| Maybe it's worth pursuing maybe not. I think the biggest
| obstacle is how much state and local governments
| cooperate. State and local governments that are
| supportive are going to reap the benefits while hostile
| ones will suffer in the long term. Nashville recently
| voted down a comprehensive light rail plan so not sure
| how much support there is on that end.
| treis wrote:
| I said the focus on rail in general, not just Amtrak.
| MARTA and local transport activist in general have
| focused their efforts on rail expansion. It's consuming a
| large majority of capital improvement resources
| available.
|
| The "if you build it they will come" is an argument I've
| seen a lot. But it's hard to square that with the decline
| in usage of exiting rail. I know in Atlanta ridership is
| down 15% despite a 40% increase in population.
| mc32 wrote:
| They show one going from SF to Reno. There is some kind of
| station at Truckee. I've never taken an Amtrack to
| Reno/Truckee. I would think if they promoted this more, you
| could have more skiers go the weekend to Truckee/Tahoe/Reno/Mt
| Rose a lot more to avoid getting stuck on I-80 during storms as
| well as avoiding 4-hr drives. I'm guessing it sucks.
|
| Also nice would be SJC to Santa Cruz.
| mason55 wrote:
| I'm guessing the problem is last mile. There is a train from
| Denver that takes you directly to one mountain (Winter Park)
| but getting a train to any other mountain adds a ton of time
| and expense because you need shuttles from the train stop.
| The ski resorts are necessarily far apart (because they're
| huge) and the time most people want to go is in the worst
| weather to be driving shuttles all over.
|
| That Reno to Tahoe drive is still a hike and
| Heavenly/Squaw/Sierra at Tahoe are decently far apart.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| > the time most people want to go is in the worst weather
| to be driving shuttles all over.
|
| Doesn't that also mean its a bad time for people to be
| driving their own cars all over?
| naturalauction wrote:
| I've actually taken this on existing infrastructure (Amtrak
| has a bus from Sacramento to South Lake Tahoe). The train
| to Sacramento from San Jose takes at least 3 hours and the
| bus takes another 3 (in winter weather). It's not terrible
| if you want to go to Heavenly but would be completely
| useless if you wanted to go anywhere else.
|
| Also, last mile transportation in San Jose/SV, especially
| if you were carrying around skis would be a pain. Add in
| the fact that it costs $60 each way and it just isn't worth
| it. There used to be ski busses that did the route (and
| presumably would take you right to the slopes) but I have
| no idea if they still run. Those seem like a much better
| option.
| notsureaboutpg wrote:
| Why would Nashville to Atlanta have a huge ridership?
| apostacy wrote:
| Notice the dotted line between Jacksonville FL and Mobile AL in
| the lower right?
|
| That is because of a "temporary" service suspension in 2004
| from damage by hurricane Katrina.[1]
|
| Apparently even Amtrak thinks that by 2035 they won't be
| capable of restoring service.
|
| [1]:
| https://www.jacksonville.com/article/20081117/NEWS/801256449
| db48x wrote:
| It's not a matter of capability, they just decided not to.
| They don't own the rails, so they don't have to maintain or
| repair them. I believe that CSX owns that line, and they
| repaired it in 2004. Amtrack could have restarted that
| service any time they wanted to.
| akg_67 wrote:
| Amtrak needs two things to succeed:
|
| - own rail tracks,
|
| - own stations and surrounding real estate
|
| One to enable punctuality and one to commercialize to fund
| operations. And, it all needs to be provided using government
| funds. No passenger train transport has succeeded without
| government funding and subsidy.
|
| There shouldn't be any more funding for freight rail tracks owned
| by private companies.
| EvRev wrote:
| Amtrak leases all tracks they use with the highest priority.
| Nobody could afford a ticket of they had to lay their own
| tracks.
|
| Private companies are the only ones willing to make these
| investments in infrastructure so they can leverage the data it
| provides, i.e. BNSF and Buffet.
| ajmadesc wrote:
| Most of the transcontinentals[rail lines] were heavily
| subsidized by all levels of government via sub-market-rate
| loans, land grants, and special local privileges on the
| frontier. - Conservative Enterprise Institute
| stuaxo wrote:
| Much like roads are.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Especially the land grants. The US government gave _ten
| percent_ of its territory to the railroads to get them
| built. The experience proves the opposite of "only private
| industry will invest".
| karmelapple wrote:
| I don't understand why this piece of the thread isn't
| more highly upvoted. The rails weren't able to do what
| they did without massive government assistance.
| GavinMcG wrote:
| > Private companies are the only ones willing to make these
| investments in infrastructure
|
| ...because there's an anti-government cult that occupies a
| disproportionate number of government offices in the country.
|
| "Bad" investments is exactly what government is for: things
| we'll all benefit from (including but not limited to broad
| economic contributions) but which market incentives don't
| align to produce.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| No. The fact the government can and frequently does make
| failed investments and wasted capital expenditures is
| precisely why people don't trust the government. California
| set out to make a single high speed rail line between San
| Francisco and LA 12 years ago and it's still not complete
| and it's run over what, $70B so far? And it's still going
| to be a slow rail not much faster than a trip by car after
| it's complete? This is what happens when you let inept
| bureaucracies spend money for which they never have to feel
| the effects of cost/benefit trade-offs and for which the
| opportunity costs are completely dismissed.
| zapita wrote:
| I don't understand anti-government zealots any more than
| I understand anti-capitalism zealots. Both try to cherry-
| pick facts in support of an obviously flawed theory: that
| one is the pinnacle of civilization while the other is an
| evil to root out.
|
| This kind of purist thinking is dangerous because it
| prevents you from observing the facts as they are. For
| example whatever the root cause of California's high
| speed rail problems, it's probably more complex than
| "public government is bad". But you will never find out
| because you have ideological blinders on.
| acdha wrote:
| Kind of like how U.S. telecom providers were given
| something like a hundred billion to deliver broadband
| around the country but didn't hit the promised
| performance or coverage? The private sector includes
| Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T, not just Apple or Amazon, and
| you have about as much choice not to pay for them as you
| do the local government.
|
| The key thing is not the sector but whether there's an
| effective oversight mechanism. It's a lot more productive
| to focus on those feedback loops than trying to assume
| any sector comes in exactly one universal quality level.
| adventured wrote:
| The US telecom companies were not given something like a
| hundred billion dollars. They were never paid those sums
| and they were also not given tax breaks in that amount
| either. That's one of the great forever repeating myths
| on HN (it's useful as a propaganda item, thus the
| repeating). There is even an HN member that has been
| repeatedly correcting the myth for years, here you go:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7709556
| throwawayboise wrote:
| > effective oversight mechanism
|
| Hard to do when the people who really understand
| broadband networking are working for ATT, Comcast, and
| Verizon and not for the government.
| fallingknife wrote:
| Are you referring to the anti-government cult in CA that
| couldn't build a train from SF to LA for $100 billion, so
| they decided to instead build a massive train that nobody
| will ride from Sacramento to Bakersfield? Because that cult
| really is destroying the government's reputation.
| hiram112 wrote:
| > Are you referring to the anti-government cult in CA
| that couldn't build a train from SF to LA for $100
| billion...
|
| Not sure if I'm misinterpreting your comment, or you're
| being satirical or what.
|
| I was under the impression that it was the government in
| CA that massively misspent the tax payer billions they
| were given. As far as I know, there is still no usable
| "high speed" rail between LA and SF, which is exactly the
| type of project the left claims they could build, if we
| just gave the benevolent government more cash.
|
| But maybe I'm in my own bubble, and have not heard the
| truth.
|
| I'm more familiar with the "great" government
| infrastructure we've got in my own area. Let's just say
| the DC metro is garbage, and should've been seized from
| the corrupt local politicians who've used it as a crony
| jobs program for the last few decades. But instead,
| they'll be gifted with tens of billions of more tax payer
| dollars as part of the various stimulus bills.
|
| Forgive me if I've absolutely no faith in anything the
| government touches anymore.
| door101 wrote:
| > Forgive me if I've absolutely no faith in anything the
| government touches anymore.
|
| do you drive on roads
| stickyricky wrote:
| The thing governments keep building despite their
| contribution to climate change, air pollution, destroyed
| neighborhoods, and inefficient land use? The thing funded
| by the poor at the same rate as the rich? You know... I
| think I've heard of them. My government is building
| another 6 lane overpass over a neighborhood (and its a
| toll!). Hope this one works out!
| syshum wrote:
| Yes, and I have to have a truck because if I drove a
| normal car it would be int eh shop every week due to all
| the damage the government roads would cause to the
| suspension
|
| The "who will build the roads" trope is common statement
| for people that support government largess, is ironically
| poor example of "good government" and completely ignores
| reality that in most area's the government does a VERY
| VERY VERY poor job at road maintenance while charging the
| citizens an obscene amount of money for that poor
| service.
|
| If a private home owner assocation paid the amount of
| money most governments do per mile of private road they
| would be in the civil courts suing that contractor.
|
| BTW many communities in the US do have private roads in
| them, maintained by the owners of the homes in those
| communities
| door101 wrote:
| Oh you're like one of those libertarians
| dimitrios1 wrote:
| No, no, they must be referring to the anti-government
| cult that couldn't repair a one mile stretch of subway in
| NYC for 3 billion!
| gumby wrote:
| I have worked in the Central Valley. Frankly anything
| that ties the SF Bay Area and LA Basin to the Central
| Valley is a good thing.
|
| This does not defend the appalling incompetence in
| "managing" the HSR project, I'm just defending the choice
| of running the train up the Central Valley which I had
| not understood at the time the project was initially
| approved.
| 0xffff2 wrote:
| Running the train up the central valley was always part
| of the plan and is a perfectly reasonable thing to do.
| The problem is that California is currently building a
| train from one end of the valley to the other that
| _doesn't_ actually connect to either major metro area.
| jcranmer wrote:
| CAHSR essentially consists of 6 separate pieces: Bay
| Area-to-Central Valley; the SF Peninsula run; Sacramento-
| to-Central Valley; LA-to-Central Valley; LA-to-San Diego;
| and the Central Valley itself. San Diego, San Francisco,
| and Sacramento were all planned to be later phases
| anyways, which means the initial operating segment
| choices are either the Central Valley itself or crossing
| into it in the Bay Area or LA.
|
| The Central Valley was chosen as the first construction
| package area because a lot of the initial money CAHSR got
| from the federal government had to be spent quickly, and
| flat ground means that the construction would be the
| cheapest and quickest construction portion. That the
| result has neither been cheap nor quick is a pretty
| severe indictment of the epic mismanagement involved.
| gumby wrote:
| It's also politically astute to do the first major public
| spending in the reddest part of the state, and then
| connect to the endpoints who are less likely to change
| their minds.
| hellbannedguy wrote:
| I used to be a general contractor. I kinda know how
| government building contracts are handed out.
|
| In order to bid on a project, the government needs three
| bids from three from three different companies.
|
| In my county, we have continual road, sewer,
| communications work. It's almost like it's never ending
| work that doesn't get completed?
|
| I live in the lovely liberal enclave of Marin County.
|
| I noticed, in my county, there is one company that gets
| All the work. (A very old company. If you live here you
| know it's Italian name.)
|
| A few years back I started looking at the competing three
| bids. I looked up the heads of the companies that were
| bidding.
|
| What I found was surprising.
|
| In many cases the three companies that bid on a
| government job had a family member, related to the
| company that gets all our county work, on their
| contractor's licenses.
|
| It looks like the Italian family sent their
| kids/grandkids to Sacramento to pass a very easy test,
| and had them set up "separate" companies.
|
| Why--so at bidding time the three companies would be
| eesntially bidding against themselfs.
|
| The winner of the "rigged" bid gets the contract
| essentially for the Italian family that gets all the
| jobs, and keeps the never ending road infrastructure jobs
| going.
|
| The companies must share equipment, and employees? I
| guess it's all legal?
|
| So---if you ever wonder why one company seems to get all
| the contracts, it might now be that it's the best
| company.
|
| I do understand it takes millions in machines to build
| projects, and not every company has the equipment.
|
| I just feel like the system is rigged, and not more
| efficient than many government run projects.
|
| When there no real competition, and politicians who are
| way out of their expertise, granting the OK for a huge
| job; the private company can pretty much do whatever it
| wants, and blame the slowdown on the, "infarculator of
| the ground water table rod of thelvin, and that's why
| it's taking so long Chief?"
|
| (Some projects have Performance Bonds. Many do not
| require them. Those ongoing projects where they seem to
| did up a road, and repair it, then dig it up again; most
| likely don't have Performance Bonds.)
| throwawayboise wrote:
| I'm paraphrasing Adam Carolla here, but he's not the only
| one who has made this observation: the average business
| owner is way smarter than the average politician. They
| will run rings around any regulations that hurt their
| profitability, and if they can't, they will leave and
| take the economic contributions of their business with
| them.
| underwater wrote:
| I don't think it's necessarily smarter. Businesses just
| have a lot of advantages the government doesn't have.
| They can be nimble. They are not beholden to voters. They
| can take existential risks.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| >..because there's an anti-government cult that occupies a
| disproportionate number of government offices in the
| country.
|
| Yeah, all those evil libertarians that run the west coast
| /s
|
| NE corridor has decent passenger rail. CA has laughable
| passenger rail. Both are as blue and pro-"fix problems with
| government" as can be. I know sample size is only 2 but
| this does point to the cause of the discrepancy being
| elsewhere.
|
| I agree that "picking up the shit nobody else will" is the
| kind of investment government should be making but clearly
| just "removing the anti-government cult" isn't enough to
| make passenger rail succeed.
| [deleted]
| kolinko wrote:
| In some if not most countries in Europe tracks are built by
| government owned companies. So it is possible
| pridkett wrote:
| Amtrak owns most of the Northeast Corridor[0] - except the
| section from New Haven to New Rochelle, which is owned by the
| State of CT and Metro North. Incidentally, there are the
| sections where the Acela slows to a crawl. This is also the
| most viable corridor for Amtrak.
|
| They also own sections of other lines - including the New
| Haven-Springfield line[1].
|
| [0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_Corridor
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hartford_Line
| jen20 wrote:
| > Nobody could afford a ticket of they had to lay their own
| tracks.
|
| Only assuming ticket sales needed to cover all operations,
| which definitely need not be the case.
| caturopath wrote:
| > Amtrak leases all tracks they use with the highest
| priority.
|
| Not in any useful way: freight delays passenger trains in the
| US with impunity.
|
| http://blog.amtrak.com/2019/05/why-are-amtrak-trains-
| delayed...
| tedunangst wrote:
| My understanding is that's a somewhat deceptive
| description, but would appreciate clarification. Amtrak has
| priority in that when they lease the line, they select the
| time their train runs, and freight schedules around. But if
| Amtrak is delayed, the freight train doesn't have to jump
| off the tracks to clear space.
| gimmeThaBeet wrote:
| My experience (Norfolk Southern and CSX operate the
| tracks in my area) is that I am learning that amtrak is
| supposed to have priority right here. My personal
| experience has been almost the opposite. Knock on wood,
| in my recollection I've never experienced any other
| significant delay except freight traffic interference.
| But like, on separate occasions, I've had a 4+ hour delay
| from Chicago to Buffalo (~8 hour drive), couple hours
| through NY State, had a 20 minute stop in Syracuse turn
| into 1.5 hours, all due to freight traffic. I assume the
| train is going to arrive where I'm going like an hour
| late at least.
|
| The only significant thing that wasn't freight related,
| is they split the train in Albany when you are going to
| NYC or Boston. The second train had some issues, so it
| took a bit to get a different one, so we were sitting
| there without power in like, July for an hour or so.
| crazygringo wrote:
| That would seem rather circular, since Amtrak delays are
| almost always _caused_ by freight trains. (Unless it 's
| horrible snow blizzard weather or something.)
|
| My personal experience is that having taken Amtrak from
| NYC a huge number of times, it's never been meaningfully
| delayed leaving Penn Station. But that it will _get_
| delayed en route, as the train comes to a halt and the
| conductor announces we 're waiting for a freight train.
| We wait for 10 or 15 minutes, the freight train takes a
| couple minutes to whiz by, and then we start moving
| again.
|
| So I don't know what priority Amtrak has on paper, but in
| reality Amtrak trains that leave on time _are_ delayed by
| freight.
|
| So much so that for my return trip where I catch a train
| that's already been en route for 8+ hours, it's virtually
| always 30-90 minutes late.
| anaerobicover wrote:
| I want to corroborate this. I have ridden between NYC,
| Boston, and Chicago dozens of times, a very nice trip.
| Heading west, we generally to Albany-Renssalear on time,
| make the connection, and proceed on time. Even in winter
| snow.
|
| The number of times it has _not_ been delayed by freight
| after that, crossing upstate New York, numbers in the
| single digits.
|
| For some reason eastbound seems to fare better, but still
| no guarantees.
| gimmeThaBeet wrote:
| 100% agree. The Late Shore Limited is in fact not a lazy
| joke.
| jcranmer wrote:
| While that is true, there are a few freight companies
| that don't particularly care about the priority
| situation, so that they don't care about causing the
| initial delay that causes the loss of priority.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| Delays can have cascading effects. And if a freight train
| is delayed, or breaks down on a crossing track at 5:00pm,
| it's not like it can get out of the way just because
| Amtrak is scheduled to go through at 5:15.
| hedora wrote:
| The bigger issue is that the freight companies control
| line maintenance. The upshot is that there's no incentive
| to straighten the tracks to run them at higher than
| freight train speeds.
|
| For example, on the San Jose <-> Oakland commuter line
| (which has existed for decades!), Amtrak runs trains with
| top speeds of 120mph (or was it 85?) at something closer
| to a top speed of 45mph.
|
| Edit: Also, the freight line routes no longer make sense.
| For instance, they run through a pedestrian plaza in Jack
| London square to an ecological restoration area in south
| bay, where most factories have been shut down. (There are
| still salt ponds, but that salt evaporation plant is
| slowly being shut down in an ecologically responsible
| way, as I understand it).
|
| I think they should give the freight company imminent
| domain rights to run a line due east (to sparsely
| populated areas), allowing the freight lines to run
| unimpeded by Bay Area rush hour and pedestrians. In
| exchange, the freight lines would give their existing
| right of way to commuter rail systems.
|
| Also, while I'm dreaming, Bart would be converted to
| standard track width, and they'd restore the Palo Alto to
| Santa Cruz commuter rail lines. Then, all the systems
| would be put under a single authority, and all the
| transfers between the existing systems would be timed
| transfers.
| schoen wrote:
| > imminent domain
|
| Should be "eminent".
|
| https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/eminent_domain
|
| It's amazing to see the trains running at-grade right
| through a busy downtown street in Oakland; I feel like
| I've never seen that anywhere else! (Except in
| _Inception_ as part of a nightmare, maybe.)
| JCharante wrote:
| > Nobody could afford a ticket of they had to lay their own
| tracks.
|
| I'm under the impression that China subsidizes the cost of
| train tickets because it's viewed as an economic multiplier
| and sociatal benefit. As an American, it'd be pretty cool if
| America could do this. It'd also be helpful for tourists to
| visit smaller train connected cities rather than flying from
| 1 hub to the next.
| blackguardx wrote:
| We consider roads an economic multiplier and societal
| benefit. They never pay for themselves with gas taxes.
|
| We should build out more rail with the same logic.
| briffle wrote:
| Same with airports
| colin_mccabe wrote:
| The US highway system did pay for itself out of gas
| taxes. The highway trust fund was set up for this
| purpose. See
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highway_Trust_Fund . In
| recent years the highway trust fund has not been
| adequate, for two reasons: one, Congress diverted money
| from the highway trust fund to fund things that were not
| highways, and two, the value of the tax didn't keep pace
| with inflation and it hasn't been increased recently.
| codekansas wrote:
| That plus the clear difference that funding trains would
| basically mean subsidizing the operations of a few large
| companies, while anyone can drive on publicly funded
| roads
| realityking wrote:
| Since Amtrak is fully owned by the federal government,
| why not let them run the trains. That way there's no
| subsidizing of a few large companies.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| Amtrak is the brand name for the service provided by
| National Railroad Passenger Corporation, a weird quasi-
| public, ostensibly for-profit corporation. Its stock is
| all owned by the government, but it's not supposed to be
| dependent on subsidies to operate.
| guerrilla wrote:
| > Amtrak leases all tracks they use with the highest
| priority.
|
| Since when? Source? They were always getting preempted when I
| used it.
| bpye wrote:
| They are supposed to have priority [0] but the system lacks
| enforcement.
|
| [0] - http://blog.amtrak.com/2019/05/why-are-amtrak-trains-
| delayed...
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| I know people dispute self-driving cars actual feasibility, but
| with some convergent infrastructure they are an inevitability for
| long-haul transport.
|
| Realistically how fast could america get its trains? 150 mph? And
| with long stops, how fast is that?
|
| Meanwhile we can probably automate 100mph highway self driving,
| leave when you want, costs less, carry more luggage, can stop to
| see things along the way, can go more places and directions, and
| you have a car when you get there.
|
| Long haul rail IMO is really just for cargo.
| freeone3000 wrote:
| > and you have a car when you get there.
|
| Yes, that's the entire problem. The congestion, parking issues,
| public cost, and pedestrian hostility of cars doesn't go away
| just because they get automated.
| ghaff wrote:
| Even if you imagine cities with great mass transit, a ton of
| places that people go to are not cities and pretty much
| require personal transportation and this is hardly limited to
| the US.
| shalmanese wrote:
| > Realistically how fast could america get its trains? 150 mph?
|
| Ah, yes. The height of American ambition is to aspire to a
| future train eventually reaching speeds 70% of what is
| considered normal elsewhere in the world.
| twobitshifter wrote:
| Right evtol also seems to be ramping up. For the individuals
| direct transport is always going to be preferable. The cost for
| evtol is much lower than for rail or highways, however
| currently they require pilots which is a stumbling block.
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