[HN Gopher] American trains need more than railfan nostalgia
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American trains need more than railfan nostalgia
Author : aww_dang
Score : 118 points
Date : 2021-11-06 15:39 UTC (7 hours ago)
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| rayiner wrote:
| I think it's worth considering that maybe Americans are just bad
| at things that require centralized solutions (trains) as compared
| to things that can be decentralized (cars).
| nradov wrote:
| Air traffic control is centralized and seems to work fine.
| pjscott wrote:
| That sounds plausible on the face of it, but when I went
| looking for counterexamples they weren't hard to come by.
| Supermarkets, big box stores like Walmart, and online retail
| giants like Amazon all run centrally-managed logistics
| operations of staggering scale, and they do such a solid job
| that people hardly ever think about it. Airline companies
| suffer from weather issues and operational hiccups, but still
| manage to transport huge numbers of people all around the
| world, quickly, while surviving on slim profit margins. America
| has a lot of giant factories that actually do manage to have
| high manufacturing throughput. All of these are centralized,
| and all demonstrate truly impressive amounts of competence.
|
| (One thing these companies all have in common is that they have
| competitors and need to cater to their customers and
| shareholders. If they were poorly run, their customers would go
| somewhere else. Amtrak gets federal funding whether they're
| well run or not. This is probably a factor, though probably not
| the only factor.)
| JohnJamesRambo wrote:
| A good start would be reasonable prices. My gf and I would love
| to take a train, but every time we check Amtrak it is way more
| than flying. I mean come on! I can fly through the air cheaper
| than a train on tracks?
| pm90 wrote:
| Amtrak long distance trains have like 4 or 5 "cars". Unlike
| planes that carry hundreds of passengers, the trains carry far
| fewer so the cost per passenger tends to be higher. I'm
| guessing they don't add more cars because there isn't much
| demand but IDK; could also be their engines can't tow more.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Tracks cost a lot to build and maintain.
|
| In contrast, air costs nothing.
| occz wrote:
| Flying is highly subsidized by the simple fact that their
| externalities are allowed to simply be pumped out to the
| atmosphere. Rectifying that makes electrified trains a lot
| more competitive.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| That's decent counterargument to something I didn't write.
| exabrial wrote:
| The times I've taken Amtrak have been in the NE corridor and it's
| been a nice experience.
|
| I don't think I'd consider it for a long distance trip however,
| unless I needed to pack some extra large cargo like a mountain
| bike.
| TheCoelacanth wrote:
| Acela on the NEC is literally the single best Amtrak route in
| the entire country, but even it is pathetically slow. Acela's
| average speed from DC to NYC is only 75 mph and NYC to Boston
| is even slower.
|
| We desperately need true high speed rail on that route.
| supernova87a wrote:
| Well, as much as some of the (usual) points make sense about
| Amtrak sharing rail unreliably, the role of subsidies (hidden or
| overt) compared to other modes, I find that stories like this
| miss a fundamental truth / constraint that I have come to
| believe.
|
| For better or worse, we have a country that is in its middle age
| of infrastructure and people. We are a rich country with
| established interests and property rights where land for
| railroads can no longer be just appropriated or bought cheaply to
| reconfigure a rail system. We have people who can pay to have
| individual transportation and not have to put up with the minor
| inconveniences of public transport. We have all the debt of a
| middle aged country, plus we need to think of our other
| healthcare expenses in middle age, and don't have the appetite to
| pay for another muscle car from our youth.
|
| All these reasons make investing in rail a relatively expensive
| proposition compared to alternatives, and not only that, but it's
| especially expensive because of our high wages, standards of
| construction, environmental reviews, etc. So we stop investing in
| it.
|
| By the way, what happens along with this? When you get into this
| phase of a country, your engineering capabilities change, and
| specifically, your ability to even build these systems even
| starts to degrade and fall out of practice.
|
| Take rail, or any heavy construction/engineering industry. People
| working in such a field join it to have exciting careers, see
| growth, etc. Generally few people join just to maintain a static
| system. Unfortunately, there's much less excitement in being
| "maintenance" although some people are quite innovative even in
| such fields.
|
| So where you used to have a cohort of thousands of people trained
| and skilled at all aspects of rail building (engineering,
| operations, finance, project management, etc), now those people
| have either consolidated to the few projects remaining in the US
| (traveling around, moving cities to where the work is), work for
| Parsons or others who can aggregate enough work to keep a team
| together, or aged out, attrited away, gone to where the actual
| business is booming: Asia.
|
| You think about how in the US, if you had to get together the
| expert team to build a new rail connecting 2 cities, you would
| have to search far and wide to find the people qualified, and pay
| them huge contractor sums. Not only that, they would be out of
| practice of how to pitch such a deal to the cities and the people
| along the route. Everything would have to be done custom.
|
| In China, just to take an example, there are (up until just
| recently) 10,000 rail engineers who stamp out such a rail every
| goddamn month. How can you compete with a country that's in such
| a growth phase, unless somehow your country has an active
| strategy about how to renew itself in middle age?
|
| It's a problem. A very hard to solve problem, deeper than just
| rail schedules or simple subsidies.
| klabb3 wrote:
| > We have people who can pay to have individual transportation
| and not have to put up with the minor inconveniences of public
| transport.
|
| Air travel is public transport and Americans use it all the
| time. High speed rail has worked fabolous on 1-2h flight
| distances for decades in many parts of the world.
|
| It is preferable in every way to flights: total time, comfort,
| leg space, security & check in hassle, window sizes & scenery,
| luggage space and so on.
|
| In many areas there are good arguments for why US
| infrastructure can't be retrofitted into European, but for
| intercity travel (eg SF-LA-SD or Boston - NYC) all the
| prerequisites are there.
|
| Obviously, I'm under no illusions that it would actually happen
| due to attitudes, culture, politics and so on.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| US big infrastructure projects tend to be 2x or more expensive
| even compared to other developed nations, including ones much
| older than us.
|
| There's definitely a cost disease at play, and that makes it
| vastly harder to build and maintain the infrastructure we need.
| Unfortunately, neither major party seems to care in the least:
| the Republicans just want to cut government spending in general
| rather than make it more efficient, and the Democrats are happy
| to intentionally balloon the cost of new buildings and
| infrastructure to satisfy allies in the labor movement*. Hardly
| anyone talks seriously about efficiency.
|
| * It's common to have requirements to pay the 'prevailing union
| wage', which means no price pressure from the government, no
| negotiation to get a better deal is possible. Nothing against
| unions, but intentionally going, "we're going to ban ourselves
| from negotiating a good price when we're spending hundreds of
| millions of dollars" is ludicrous.
| selectodude wrote:
| In 2012, Amtrak estimated that it would cost $150 billion to
| upgrade the Northeast Corridor for legitimate high speed
| rail. Almost $330 million _per mile_ for a right of way that
| they _already own_. I 'm sure that would be $250 billion
| today because why the hell not?
|
| At prices like that, of course we'll never see a mile of new
| track ever laid again. We've decided that the whole thing is
| a grift, thrown our hands up and given up. Somehow the French
| can dig under central Paris for the same price that we can
| lay some rail on a plot of land that we already own.
| jcranmer wrote:
| > Almost $330 million per mile for a right of way that they
| already own.
|
| Actually, no. That proposal included entirely new tunnels
| and city-center stations in Baltimore and Philadelphia, and
| an entirely new ROW that went from NYC out Long Island, a
| Long Island Sound crossing to New Haven, new ROW up to
| Springfield, and then east into Boston, rather than reusing
| any of the BOS-NYC right-of-way. All of which are expensive
| and relatively low value (although the CT corridor does
| need entirely new ROW suitable for HSR, the cost of
| building such a ROW largely parallel to the existing one--
| including the taking of expensive property in CT--is likely
| cheaper than building the Long Island Sound crossing _by
| itself_ ).
|
| In a way, I think this is an example of where a large part
| of American cost disease comes from--projects are designed
| on the basis of large, flashy megaprojects rather than
| looking for how to make multiple small, incremental
| improvements that can be done on the cheap. For example,
| you could probably squeeze a half an hour or so out of BOS-
| NYC train time simply by fixing dispatching issues on the
| New Rochelle-New Haven stretch, which would require very
| little construction (turning Rye into a flying junction
| would be the biggest piece I could imagine)--$10s of
| millions at worst.
| BuyMyBitcoins wrote:
| I also can't help but think we Americans "democratize"
| construction too much. Whenever a project is announced dozens
| of people come out of the woodwork to protest any and all
| aspects of the plan. Things get delayed because the local
| busybodies bring up as much as they can to either halt the
| construction entirely or to demand concessions. Some of the
| regulations make sense for _most_ new projects, but does an
| existing rail line they're trying to allow passenger trains
| on _need_ a new environmental impact study because the locals
| demanded a new 15 foot high sound wall? It's already inside
| of a major city and it's not like there are any endangered
| species it's going to impact.
| kumarsw wrote:
| Somewhat tangentially, I watched a recent Not Just Bikes YouTube
| video that discusses the merits of commuter rail [1]. The video
| is obviously trying to discourage infrastructure that supports
| car-based suburbs, but another point came out that struck me:
| commuter rail is very expensive infrastructure with very low
| utilization, say 4 incoming trains in the morning and 4 outgoing
| trains in the evening. Any public transportation option needs to
| be compared against the default choice of "run more buses," which
| it turns out is pretty hard to beat in terms of cost-
| effectiveness.
|
| [1] https://youtu.be/vxWjtpzCIfA
| TigeriusKirk wrote:
| Los Angeles did sort of a compromise in the San Fernando
| Valley. Instead of light rail, they put extra long busses on a
| dedicated busway. Part of the busway was an old rail line.
|
| It's worked out pretty well. It seems to attract people who
| wouldn't ride metro buses, for one thing.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G_Line_(Los_Angeles_Metro)
| fulafel wrote:
| The WP article explains that it was just to work around a
| bill forbidding surface rail on that route.
| mst wrote:
| That might have been _why_ they decided to do it but the
| question of return-on-investment in terms of infrastructure
| costs is still interesting and doesn 't really depend on
| the underlying motivation for the choice.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Busses are similar in some ways to the Amtrak issue. They are
| cheap, but very variable -- although things like bus rapid
| transit help.
|
| I live in a small city, and the return bus trip takes 45-60m.
| The morning trip takes about 20. I pay about $80/mo to park at
| work, and my commute is 6-10m each way.
| nickpeterson wrote:
| More high end, electric buses is probably the best option.
| They're comfortable, take the room of 3 cars, fit way more
| people, and use existing infrastructure.
| himlion wrote:
| Yes I think so too. I don't see rail competing with that once
| the charging challenges have been solved.
| urthor wrote:
| I forget where I read it, but the cost per km of rail vs buses
| is pretty appalling.
|
| I suppose that rail has theoretically the advantage in being
| more reliable. But I do wonder if you could carry the same
| quantity (outside the subway cities) of passengers on a double
| lane bus road as a train.
| occz wrote:
| You need to consider the price of road infrastructure in the
| total cost of buses. If that is not considered, then you
| could just as easily just calculate the cost of trains by
| excluding the rail and signalling-cost (and you would be just
| as incorrect).
| sokoloff wrote:
| You should certainly consider the buses' share of the road
| cost, just like you should consider only the portion of the
| rail cost that is built and maintained for the commuter
| usage. If either of those shares is 100%, logically it
| should be burdened with 100% of the cost. Bus depots, bus
| maintenance yard, dedicated bus lanes, and bus stop
| turnouts should all be 100%.
| bombcar wrote:
| The big advantage of rails is people don't try to drive on
| them.
|
| Build a dedicated bus lane across the country and everyone
| will want to use it for their cars, and either do so or bitch
| to the politicians that they can't.
| MereInterest wrote:
| Is the cost of roads handled in that comparison, or are the
| roads assumed to already exist? (And are the roads being
| continually expanded to keep up with the induced demand from
| previous expansion?) If not, then that gives buses an unfair
| advantage in the comparison.
|
| Also, per kilometer probably isn't the best metric, unless
| you're building into a low-density area. It would be better
| to compare the cost per kilometer, divided by the throughput
| (people/hour).
| jeffbee wrote:
| That sounds like the worst rail service imaginable. Very
| American.
|
| The Swiss town of Chur, which has the same population as Menlo
| Park, California, and which is a good distance from Zurich, as
| Menlo Park is from San Francisco, has five S-Bahn trains every
| hour, all day long, plus 9 other regional, interregional, and
| intercity trains per hour.
|
| There's nothing fundamental about trains that says you have to
| have insulting levels of service. It's a choice.
| ravitation wrote:
| It's a choice funded by the automobile and airline lobbies.
| Fiahil wrote:
| We went to switzerland for vacation last summer, and we were
| quite impressed by the rail system there. Everything runs on
| time, there is no shortage of space, you can buy your tickets
| online and the trains are quiet and clean. I'm from France,
| so I'm not easily impressed by a working train station.
|
| I don't think you can hold any American state to that level
| of expectation when they are 70 years late in their railroad
| infrastructure. Not even California would be able to match a
| 1/10 of your rail service before 2050.
| jeffbee wrote:
| I don't need the whole USA or even California. I'd settle
| for fixing the Bay Area, which has close to the same
| population as Switzerland, about the same economic
| activity, and only half the territory to cover. It should
| be a piece of cake.
| rsj_hn wrote:
| > It should be a piece of cake.
|
| Eh, you can't compare a local area GDP to a national GDP
| like this. Yes, tons of software licensing and ad revenue
| are funneled to the SF region giving us a local area GDP
| of 591 Billion dollars[1] which is comparable to
| Switzerland's $750 Billion, but if you try to convert
| that regional income into infrastructure spending, you'll
| find that
|
| 1) the ability of the bay area to tax that 591 Billion is
| much less than the ability of Switzerland to tax it's
| economic activity, as Switzerland captures ~32% of it's
| national income, while the bay area captures something
| like 10% of its regional income, so a ballpark 1/3
| deflator.
|
| 2) once revenue is obtained from taxing, the efficiency
| with which the distributed bay area governments can make
| use of the tax revenue is much, much lower than the
| efficiency with which the Swiss government can spend the
| money. I'd estimate a 1/10 deflator. This is because we
| will waste tons of money doing various studies,
| funnelling side payments to local machine politics,
| battling environment impact reports in courts, funding
| various diversity and equity initiatives, and set up a
| dozen committees to oversee the spending plans.
|
| 3) once a dollar is actually spent on the production of
| infrastructure in the bay area, you'll find that the we
| will get much, much less for that dollar in
| infrastructure spending then the same dollar spent in
| Switzerland on infrastructure. I'd say another factor of
| 1/3 as per https://www.vox.com/22534714/rail-roads-
| infrastructure-costs...
|
| So when you multiply all those deflators, you'll find
| that our 591 Billion can be usefully channelled to 1/90 *
| 591/750 ~= 1% of the useful infrastructure that
| Switzerland has.
|
| Which seems about right.
|
| Remember it cost San Francisco $3 Billion for the DTX[2]
| which is 2 kilometers of transit. We are not Switzerland,
| we are a dysfunctional, corrupt, patchwork of local
| governments that doesn't really understand much of
| anything when it comes to infrastructure or efficient
| government.
|
| [1] https://apps.bea.gov/iTable/iTable.cfm?reqid=70&step=
| 1&acrdn...
|
| [2] https://sf.curbed.com/2018/6/18/17464616/bay-area-
| subway-tra...
| jeffbee wrote:
| I didn't say it _would_ work, only that it _should_ work.
| umanwizard wrote:
| Thanks for this. I always get irritated by comments from
| Europeans like "why haven't the Americans fixed the
| dysfunctional things about their country?". You might as
| well ask "why don't Syrians just decide not to have a
| war?". Reality is not so simple.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| It depends on the commuter rail. The S-Bahn in Germany is sort
| of 'commuter rail' but also gets regular use for other types of
| trips. And actual commuter-specific train lines tend to go on
| just general tracks that are used for other lines as well, so
| it's not a huge deal.
|
| It's just that US-style development -- more or less mandated by
| the government -- makes public transit in general infeasible.
| For example, in Munich where I lived, there are suburbs nearby
| surrounded completely by farmland, where the whole town is
| still a handful of minutes by bike to the train station. That
| means that even in these sleepy little towns, it's dense enough
| to where a car is unnecessary. In the US, that kind of
| development is a rarity, because the local zoning makes it
| literally illegal, and the roads have been designed to be
| hostile to anything that's not a car.
| jeffbee wrote:
| That kind of town is vanishingly rare in the US. The only
| ones I can think of in California where a meaningful amount
| of the town is within walking distance of a train station are
| Davis and Chico, both university towns. Chico only has one
| train per day and it comes at 3 in the morning :-/
| mushbino wrote:
| Reliable rail has been supported very heavily wherever it
| exists and it's the preferred option nearly everywhere.
|
| Busses are slow, uncomfortable, and less reliable, even if
| cheaper to operate. They can be a decent connector or last mile
| option.
| xabotage wrote:
| Buses would be way better if roads were designed to
| prioritize them over single passenger cars. Instead (in the
| US), you're just stuck in traffic with extra stops, so you
| might as well drive.
| Doctor_Fegg wrote:
| > commuter rail is very expensive infrastructure with very low
| utilization, say 4 incoming trains in the morning and 4
| outgoing trains in the evening
|
| Post-COVID travelling patterns in the UK seem to suggest that
| the peaks are being ironed out. Whereas previously rolling
| stock procurement was dictated by the number of bums on seats
| for the morning and evening peak, now there's much more
| consistent demand across the day, and at weekends too - on some
| lines, weekend usage is now reportedly exceeding weekdays. No
| doubt it'll vary from place to place, but it looks like the
| days of buying enough rolling stock for the peaks, then having
| it sit empty for the rest of the day, might be over.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| There are basically two modes of operation where trains can
| really be competitive:
|
| a. Suburban-to-city center commuter trains stopping every two
| miles or so, vacuuming up all the people from the suburbia that
| want to get to the city without the hassle of endless traffic
| jams. These need a certain density of the suburbs, so that the
| stops make sense and the train is "just full", but not absurdly
| crammed.
|
| b. High speed connections between metropolitan areas, like
| Madrid-Barcelona, Tokyo-Kyoto, Koln-Frankfurt etc. Usually, at
| least a million people must live on either end of the connection.
|
| One of the problems is that these two services need separate
| tracks. Suburban commuter trains are much slower on average than
| high speed trains and they cannot share the same track, unless
| you want to risk chaos every day.
|
| Unfortunately, few densely inhabited places in the U.S. have
| space left for so many tracks, especially in the wider city
| centers. A potential renaissance of rail travel in the U.S. would
| likely require underground tunnels. Which is possible (see
| London's Crosslink project), but not exactly cheap.
| ravitation wrote:
| The Texas Triangle has a higher population density than France,
| a relative abundance of space between major cities, and four
| major metropolitan areas... But it's private companies trying
| to build high-speed rail, not Amtrak. The idea that it's a
| geography problem, at least for regional rail lines, is not
| very compelling.
| reillyse wrote:
| I think relatively speaking the US is not densely inhabited. So
| sure in densely packed places there is not much space (by
| definition) but then almost nowhere in the US is densely
| packed. E.g. between LA and SF it's 99% farmland, between LA
| and Vegas it's mostly farm or desert.
|
| What the US needs is political will and I think the political
| will in the US has been eroded (by bribes) by the petrol, car
| and flying lobbies.
| TheCoelacanth wrote:
| DC to Boston is basically one continuous urban area, yet we
| still don't have high speed rail on that route.
| reillyse wrote:
| Right, we are in agreement. I think there should be rail in
| urban areas, but I was specifically refuting the idea that
| there was no room for rail.
| samstave wrote:
| >>>a. Suburban-to-city center commuter trains stopping every
| two miles or so, vacuuming up all the people from the suburbia
| that want to get to the city without the hassle of endless
| traffic jams. These need a certain density of the suburbs, so
| that the stops make sense and the train is "just full", but not
| absurdly crammed.
|
| UHMmmmmm
|
| Cal train from south SF to say - moutain view on a bike was the
| worst...
|
| They would only pull a couple cars and only one of them would
| be a bike car.
|
| Many times had the bike car been full and I had been physically
| stopped from boarding the train with a bike... when there was
| clearly more room on the train's bike car - it was that the
| bike-hangers were full...
|
| I was late to a number of meetings because of this.
|
| Also - Rail is so poorly integrated that BART and Amtrak and
| Caltrain all have less than optimal intersecting stations.
| t0mmyb0y wrote:
| I love trains, watching & riding, and not a railfan. What we need
| is secure lines. Way too easy to derail trains in middle of
| nowhere. It happens and is not reported so we can feel safe.
| Lammy wrote:
| Fun fact: the name "Amtrak" was a last-minute change. The company
| was planned to be named "Railpax" as a pun on the industry
| abbreviation for "passenger" (PAX) and "Pax Americana".
| markus_zhang wrote:
| I think one of the problems is that passenger trains don't get a
| lot of business so it's difficult to scale up? Plus the railroads
| seem to be owned by different private companies so maybe that
| contributes to the problem too.
|
| Off-topic:
|
| In the early 90s I was a happy Chinese boy who travelled between
| Hefei (the provincial city of Anhui province) and Wuhu (another
| city in Anhui province) by train frequently. Back then the
| passenger trains had three categories: 1) Slow (stopped at almost
| every station); 2) Fast and 3) Passenger-Fast. "Passenger-Fast"
| was the fastest and other trains including freights gave way to
| it. But it was also the most expensive one so I generally took
| "Slow" or "Fast". For a mere 150KM it usually took 5 hours and
| more with half of the time spent on waiting for other trains to
| pass. The worst part was that Hefei and Wuhu sit at opposite
| sides of the Long River so I had to get off the train at the
| north side and take a passenger ship to reach Wuhu. The whole
| journey could take as much as 7~8 hours.
|
| But it was also pretty fun. I was able to lift the windows and
| stick my neck out to look for trains on the other track (very
| dangerous!). The locomotives were steam engines (steam engines
| were largely being replaced but some were retained) and I still
| dreamed of their roaring occasionally when dreaming.
| exolymph wrote:
| Thank you for sharing your nostalgic memories with us, you
| conjured the carefree wonder of childhood for me <3
| markus_zhang wrote:
| No problem :) Those were the better days.
| neltnerb wrote:
| I have heard it said that with public transit (including inter-
| city travel) service drives demand. Until you can rely on it
| for your commute people don't use it at all. For inter-city
| rail the "service" includes getting you to a location where you
| don't need to already magically have a car there to use.
|
| But I'm not so sure where this idea comes from, I've heard it
| said but not seen actual research. It seems simple, but you
| can't just take a high speed rail and put a stop in the middle
| of nowhere and expect a city to pop up. Clearly as in their
| example for Waterloo thoughtful service might drive demand but
| useless service not so much.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| I'm not sure about inter-city travel because as you said the
| train can't just stop in the middle of no where. But I think
| it works for subways and buses, at least in China.
|
| China has a different model of city economic expansion and
| here is the basic idea:
|
| - Government identifies new areas to develop (they could be
| "out of city" but usually just suburbs/rural);
|
| - Public transits were developed to cover those lands before
| others move (so no malls, no hospitals, no residential
| buildings, etc.);
|
| - Because it takes a lot of time and money to develop public
| transit, city sometimes issue bonds;
|
| - Other buildings start to move in, usually starting from
| residential buildings and malls;
|
| - City expects the revenue and tax from newly developed lands
| to cover the cost of bonds
|
| This sort of "creates" new cities (actually they are called
| satellite cities) but I don't think it gets to extend very
| far.
| wpietri wrote:
| Wow, this is a really good article.
|
| In my youth I took trains a fair bit in the midwest for journeys
| of a few hours. But I hadn't done a long trip until the summer of
| 2019, where we did SF -> Chicago. I truly loved it; there's a
| kind of enforced serenity to it that is a rare commodity these
| days.
|
| Admittedly the whole experience felt a bit retro; the the
| passenger cars could use a modern update. Or at least an attempt
| to seek parity with Europe. And there are long stretches with no
| internet access, which I have mixed feelings about. But overall,
| it was a joy.
|
| And of course it gave me an idea for an app to build. The number
| one question I had was, "What the hell is that out the window?"
| It was also a frequent question Amtrak employees get. So I taught
| myself Flutter and a little ML and built an app that was
| basically a dynamic, POV-specific rail travel guide. Whenever you
| opened it it would show you a map of your surroundings and nearby
| Wikipedia points of interest, with the ability to tap for details
| and photos.
|
| Happily, a friend did a long trail trip in early 2020, so I even
| had a beta tester. Result: positive! My other market data
| suggested that what I was doing was dicey as far as a sustainable
| business went, but it seemed worth a go. And then the pandemic
| came along, killing the recreational travel market. Oops!
|
| Anyhow, I also had joined the Rail Passengers Association, a pro-
| train lobby group, and went to one of their semiannual meetings.
| The audience wouldn't have been out of place in an Iowan
| retirement home. There was a modest sprinkling of middle aged
| people, and even a few representatives of the Numtot contingent.
| [1] That "railfan nostalgia" was a major driver of attendance.
|
| The people in charge were motivated by more, of course. They made
| sharp, analytical cases for the value of trains and were keenly
| aware of the pernicious underinvestment in rail and the
| difficulty of competing with (subsidized) car and air travel. I
| left convinced that a) especially as we decarbonize, there was a
| good case for rail, b) getting anything done versus vested
| interests, legislator cluelessness, and American business culture
| was very much an uphill slog, and c) the geriatric nature of the
| market meant the market for any sort of app was much smaller than
| I was hoping.
|
| I wish them all the best, though.
|
| [1] https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/jul/05/meet-the-
| numt...
| jeffbee wrote:
| Here's some math I have been trying to socialize for a few years.
| The cost of simply nationalizing the Union Pacific is not very
| high. You could take over the governance of the tracks with
| serious conflicts between freight and passenger service and spin
| off the rest of it into a new operating company with all of the
| remainder of the freight network, the rolling stock etc. The net
| cost would be a few percentage points of the value of the UPRR,
| single-digit billions at most. It would be well worth it to solve
| the conflicts in places like Sacramento-to-Bay Area.
| occz wrote:
| If car use and infrastructure wasn't so heavily subsidized, then
| trains would likely fare a lot better.
| aww_dang wrote:
| Japan's private rail system is sometimes characterized as a
| real estate development scheme with a railroad attached.
|
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2012-05-18/the-secre...
|
| >That's the most of any private railway in Japan, as of 2006,
| according to Calimente. That year Tokyu generated $2.63 billion
| in revenue en route to $587 million in profits. Rail fares
| brought in about a third of that figure, real estate holdings
| reap another third, and retail about a fifth.
|
| Even in a highly managed economy, private or semi-private rail
| may be able to compete under the right circumstances.
| pm90 wrote:
| I could totally see railway stations becoming "hubs", with
| restaurants/bars/coffeeshops for people to just hang out
| pre/post journey. In SFBA the Caltrain stations are totally
| deserted and have maybe a parking lot; this seemed really
| unusual to me as someone who grew up in Mumbai where the
| train stations have all kinds of stores selling food/books
| etc. It seemed so... dead. Somewhat alarmingly they don't
| even have public restrooms!
|
| This is predicated on foot traffic though. And American
| transit systems are, let's say, not the most appealing. I do
| hope that it changes.
| newleaf wrote:
| This is the model being tried at the Miami Brightline
| station. The owners were (are?): Florida East Coast
| Industries, which is owned by Fortress Investment Group,
| which owned by Japanese conglomerate Softbank.
| drdeadringer wrote:
| > In SFBA the Caltrain stations are totally deserted
|
| Whilst some are, there are also a lot that are right next
| to "downtown areas" with restaurants/bars/coffeeshops.
| Sunnyvale, Mt View, Palo Alto, Redwood City for examples.
|
| Are you thinking just of the San Francisco terminus or the
| current "pre-Google development" San Jose Diridon terminus?
| pm90 wrote:
| Yes, I use the Sunnyvale/Santa Clara - SF route.
| samstave wrote:
| Im really surprised that there is no "Train Ferry" -- A train
| that one drives their car onto and takes the train across
| country/states and then disembarks with their car...
|
| I used to take the train very often from sacramento to the bay
| area... It was clean, has wifi, quiet, power, drinks, food...
|
| It was a great commute - but the prices are still too high...
| aww_dang wrote:
| https://www.amtrak.com/auto-train
| samstave wrote:
| Well Hot Damn!... this is definitely on track.
|
| The only problem that I have with Amtrak is their
| disconnect with modern pricing for value of service.
|
| Case in point being a train ride from say SF to Seattle is
| WAY more expensive than a flight, many times longer and
| other than no plane crash risks... what value is it for
| that price?
|
| I find it akin to the guy on a slow sunday morning drive on
| an impassable two-lane highway where his old restored 1938
| ford only goes 45 mph and the speed limit is 65 and there
| are mad waitresses trying to make it to clock-in time and
| the old guy is oblivious to other's need to be to work on
| time...
|
| (this is a true story based on a close friend of mine who
| works at the French Laundry and is constantly thwarted by
| oblivious slow drivers)
| aww_dang wrote:
| It only makes sense if you value it based on other
| factors. Some of these items are more valuable to me than
| the cost. The time factors are difficult depending on
| your circumstances.
|
| 1) No TSA (at least when I last used it)
|
| 2) You can show up with a bicycle. They will provide a
| box and you pack it yourself. Your bicycle will not be
| molested.
|
| 3) You can get a private compartment and drink your own
| liquor
|
| 4) You like trains
| macintux wrote:
| About 8 years ago I was caught off guard by TSA running a
| checkpoint at the Amtrak station in Chicago. I don't know
| whether that was a common occurrence at the time, and I
| haven't ridden in years, but certainly in the moment I
| was not enthused by the potential encroachment.
| cheschire wrote:
| A buddy of mine recently moved from DC to Florida. He
| tested the auto-train once, with his family of 7 and a
| car and the total cost was $1800. After COVID, it now
| costs double that. Now he just drives the 12 hours using
| a diesel pickup truck.
|
| So they weren't always so disconnected from modern
| pricing, but I don't think the effects of COVID have
| fully played out across all the transportation options
| yet to know what 2021+ prices should look like.
| jdavis703 wrote:
| There are two lane rural highways in Napa where the speed
| limit is 65 MPH? I'm going to need a source for that one.
| tomc1985 wrote:
| Not Napa but I recall the 101 has some really high speed
| limits for some of the two-lane sections through
| Humboldt/Mendocino/Sonoma counties
| [deleted]
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| The amount of storage space you'd need for each car would
| likely make this too expensive for all but a handful of
| people.
| R0b0t1 wrote:
| No, this exists between DC and Orlando on Amtrack. I
| considered contacting Amtrack to charter a car train to my
| location to another. They'll probably do it for enough
| money and it's not that much money.
|
| What you need to know to argue is, say, they're not losing
| all of the berths on a vehicle transport car if you want to
| move one car. They're having you pay the upkeep for that
| one trip which is not the same as the fully loaded vehicle
| car.
| tomc1985 wrote:
| They do it with the Eurotunnel, though I can't remember if
| I saw anything but trucks and busses on it
| c_hackett wrote:
| With Eurotunnel Shuttle services you drive on with a road
| vehicle, remain with the vehicle for the transit and then
| drive off at the other terminal. Europorte runs freight
| operations through the tunnel. Finally Eurostar is the
| pure passenger service running the likes of London to
| Paris.
| ErikCorry wrote:
| Cars too. These are pretty big trains though, don't fit
| through normal bridges.
|
| The auto trains that go across Europe are much narrower
| and take a lot longer to load and unload. They are pretty
| expensive and only used for very long distances. Most of
| the time it makes more sense to rent a car at your
| destination.
| microtherion wrote:
| That exists in Switzerland for a number of tunnels, but
| passengers stay in their cars, which is presumably not what
| you had in mind: https://www.bls.ch/en/fahren/unterwegs-
| mit/autoverlad
| c_hackett wrote:
| Motorail operated in the UK 1966 to 1995.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorail_(British_Rail)
| sokoloff wrote:
| I live in Cambridge (across the river from and on the same subway
| system as Boston). In theory Amtrak should be able to attract my
| business for trips to NYC. Prior to COVID, about twice as often I
| flew to NYC as took rail. The times I took rail, the train
| literally never arrived on time at either end of the journey.
| We'd sit for an hour waiting for some track or switch problem to
| be fixed. Or we'd sit for a few 15 minute stretches for no
| apparent or announced reason.
|
| If I could count on the arrival time, I could use the train for
| business meetings near the train station. Since I can't, I fly in
| and Uber over which, even if it takes longer per the published
| timetable, has less tail-risk of being late.
|
| No one needs hourly rail service between city pairs (as the
| article implicitly calls for) while the variability is -10 to
| +150 minutes.
|
| Looking for a Nov 15-19 trip to NYC, Amtrak is $306 on Acela and
| I could plan to start working around lunch on Monday and work a
| full day on Friday if I was willing to arrive home around
| midnight. On Delta, waking up around the same time, I could
| reliably attend a 9AM meeting on Monday and working the same full
| day Friday, get home in time to say good night to my kids. That
| would cost $157 plus two Ubers. That's with spotting Amtrak the
| advantage of a meeting walking distance from Penn Station and
| riding on the crown jewel of the Amtrak network: Northeast
| corridor Acela.
| iso1210 wrote:
| > No one needs hourly rail service between city pairs (as the
| article implicitly calls for) while the variability is -10 to
| +150 minutes.
|
| While there's always a risk for delays (I've been stuck at
| Heathrow for 3 hours before thinking "If I'd have taken the
| train I'd be there by now"), you should be aiming for a network
| at 95%+ of services arriving within a few minutes of the
| arrival time. I understand that US passenger trains don't have
| priority, and thus this isn't workable.
|
| On that assumption, given the distance and size of
| Boston/NY/Philly/Washington, I'd expect at least a 30 minute
| service, taking well under 4 hours (should really be under 3)
| from Boston to Washington (with stops in NY, and maybe
| Phillidelphia). It's only 400 miles, that's like Paris-
| Marseille, and far shorted than a 4 hour 560 mile Tokyo -
| Hiroshima trip)
| xxpor wrote:
| >I understand that US passenger trains don't have priority,
| and thus this isn't workable.
|
| This is largely true, but _isn 't_ on the NEC. It's one of
| the few corridors that Amtrak actually owns.
| Redoubts wrote:
| Mostly. They don't own the stretch through Connecticut for
| example, and the train will come to full stops between
| stations as a result.
| PLenz wrote:
| This stretch is owned by another rail network (ConnDot)
| that prioritizes other passenger trains (Metro North and
| Shoreline East)
| iso1210 wrote:
| There's a large advantage to passengers having a
| nationally organized network - same as with air traffic
| control (provided by government), or highways (provided
| by government). Of course track segregation between non
| stop services and local services would be better.
| ardit33 wrote:
| I am the opposite of you. I live in NYC and my parents in
| Boston, and I take the train all the time.
|
| Flying is very unpleasant, as you still have to deal with
| getting in and out of airports, the whole stay in the TSA line,
| remove your shoes and belt thing. You are completely omitting
| the security crap you have to deal with air travel. Meanwhile
| the train trip starts and ends in downtown. (I live in
| manhattan and can just walk to the train station).
|
| Also, just the taxi fare from JFK to Manhattan is about 70+
| tips. Sure, you can take the subway ($8), but that will add
| another 1hr to your trip.
| carbocation wrote:
| Doesn't really strike me as the opposite. If the GP post is
| talking about being on time for specific meetings and you are
| talking about visiting family, you're optimizing for
| different objectives.
|
| Personally, I use the train vs fly to NY from BOS depending
| on my objective.
| lddemi wrote:
| your air travel could be significantly optimized with TSA
| Precheck ($20year) and Clear ($120/year) to effectively
| eliminate security headaches
| fruffy wrote:
| Why would you pay extra and deal with the additional
| headache of being screened/having to enter your private
| data if you could just take the more convenient and largely
| anonymous train for under a $100? A train where you are not
| squeezed into the seat like a sardine?
|
| I am personally also really uncomfortable with the notion
| that you have to pay an additional convenience fee just to
| have a mildly more pleasant travel experience. Coach class
| should not mean that you are cattle.
| jdavis703 wrote:
| People in coach can still use PreCheck. Work only pays
| for economy tickets, so I can tell you PreCheck still
| works fine.
|
| Also, FYI there are two price levels for TSA screening.
| One is the TSA PreCheck, the other is the 9/11 security
| fee everyone has to pay. A universal PreCheck would
| probably mean increasing the security fee.
| samstave wrote:
| And into what little database are my deets being entered
| for eternity by using either of these options, and to whom
| does the visibility to this data go?
| iso1210 wrote:
| Presumably the same database your details go in anyway,
| just with less security theatre.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Yeah, we can't make it look like we're relaxing security,
| but if we charge you an application, sit on it, and make
| felons lives worse, that's cool.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Looking over the felonies for which TSA PreCheck is
| unavailable, it doesn't appear to a thoughtlessly
| compiled make-felons-suffer list:
| https://www.tsa.gov/disqualifying-offenses-factors
| Kye wrote:
| I can see it for Part C, but why A and B? If someone's
| been charged and done whatever was required to be free
| enough that they can fly, then that should be the end of
| it. Especially things on that list. If _treason_ isn 't
| enough for the government to execute them or lock them up
| and throw away the key, then it shouldn't matter to the
| TSA.
| sokoloff wrote:
| If you can't see how felony conviction for having illegal
| explosives might reasonably preclude you from reduced
| security screening, I'm not sure anything I can say will
| convince you.
| Kye wrote:
| If you can't see how the government continuing to treat
| someone like a criminal after they've paid their debt to
| society is wrong, I'm not sure anything I can say will
| convince you.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Are they being treated like a criminal in this case? Or
| are they merely being treated as requiring standard (not
| reduced) security screening?
|
| I'm far more concerned where felons are denied the right
| to vote or to bear arms than I am with them having to
| stand in the same security line as most people.
| TigeriusKirk wrote:
| Your deets are going in a little database every time you
| buy a train ticket.
| Symbiote wrote:
| Can you not buy anonymous tickets, for example at a
| counter in the station or from a machine?
|
| There are still enough machines that take cash that this
| is a practical option in most of Europe. Buying a ticket
| in advance works, but requires a trip to the station.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Clear is one step too far to paying for freedom. Global
| entry money at least goes to one gang I already pay
| protection money to, the government. Clear is a non
| government gang that somehow got the ability to get paid in
| exchange for giving people more freedom.
| bitwize wrote:
| That's how America has always worked, though: freedom is
| an asset you buy with money. They're just saying the
| quiet part out loud now.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| When you buy it from the government, at least there is a
| veneer of it having come from democratically elected
| leaders and going back to a pot of resources that are
| democratically spent.
|
| As in there was zero reason for the government to give
| Clear a cut of the money, other than outright corruption.
| They already have the department of homeland security.
| standardUser wrote:
| Getting to/from the airport is the much larger headache
| than security in a lot of places, especially in NYC. Even
| if you're willing to pay $50-$100 each way for a car, it's
| not always easy to get a car and it's a long drive. It
| takes almost no time for Manhattanites to get to a train
| and costs virtually nothing.
| fennecfoxen wrote:
| > $70 plus tips
|
| LIRR into Penn. $16 air train + peak direction ticket (you
| can buy the latter on your phone) and much faster (20 minutes
| after you catch it at Jamaica). Less annoying going into Penn
| than going out, at least.
| samstave wrote:
| I remember one time, before Uber existed, I was flying to LAX
| from SFO.
|
| The cab from my apartment on Upper Market, in SF to SFO was
| $65 before 'tip'. 13 miles.
|
| The FLIGHT from SFO to LAX was $99.
| https://i.imgur.com/uXCj3MR.png
|
| After this, I had several Black Cars that I made contacts
| with the drivers - and would call them for rides to SFO (I
| flew out every sunday morning at 7am - and it was a nightmare
| getting cabs (I was banned by several taxi companies in SF
| because I would call three diff taxi services and 2 out of 3
| would never show up... but apparently they shared dispatching
| info because the dispatchers knew that my number was calling
| multiple taxis... and the guy told me "your banned for
| calling multiple cabs!" to which I replied "because you never
| show up and I need to get to the airport (said in a George
| Costanza voice))
|
| Then Uber was born...
| clairity wrote:
| why not take bart, especially anywhere near market? it's
| roughly $10 to either sfo or oak and pretty reliable.
|
| in LA, the flyaway is affordable and relatively reliable
| too, if your destination is near downtown, or on the red or
| orange lines.
| asciimike wrote:
| I paid $65.28 (before tip) for a Lyft from downtown to SFO
| last night (14.27 miles), for a $120 flight to DEN.
|
| I'd like to think that Uber/Lyft changed the industry for
| the better (and in many ways they did: app is easier,
| upfront pricing, easier/safer payment, more accountability
| through location tracking and ratings), but I don't think
| that the underlying economics have changed all that much
| (other than the period of time where Sand Hill Road was
| footing half the bill).
| diebeforei485 wrote:
| I usually took LIRR from JFK when I visited NYC, which is
| faster and more comfortable than the subway and often faster
| than Uber/taxi. Penn Station is convenient for most of
| Manhattan, and Atlantic Terminal is good enough for the parts
| of Brooklyn I typically stayed at.
|
| A bit more expensive than the subway, especially during peak
| hours, but worth it IMO.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| People from the 1950's would be shocked at today's
| infrastructure progress in the US. "What!?? You guys are
| still traveling at the same or worse speeds 70 years later!?
| What happened?"
|
| Also, it took 2x the cost and 8 years to build an access
| bridge to Golden Gate bridge than it did to build the bridge
| itself (3.5 years in 1930s) accounting for inflation.
|
| Our government is so dysfunctional, it is hard to imagine
| where my taxes are going. I live in Bay Area - No solution to
| homelessness here, pot holes everywhere, trash on highways
| that sometimes make me wonder if I am in a developing nation,
| new construction is a forgotten concept, complete gridlock in
| the CA gov for issuing permits of any high rises or building
| new subway systems, security and crime through the roof, etc.
|
| I am extremely against everything about CA government. It is
| rotten to the deepest core. Anything it does bites dust. The
| entrepreneur spirit and its natural beauty is what's keeping
| it relevant. There is no point in voting any of these people
| out, because the replacement is exactly the same kind of
| people. Besides the tech industry, people here have no
| optimism, they're more pro China than pro US, mostly busy
| destroying this great state.
| iso1210 wrote:
| > There is no point in voting any of these people out,
| because the replacement is exactly the same kind of people
|
| So why don't you stand?
| LeanderK wrote:
| > So why don't you stand?
|
| I am not an american, so I wonder whether it's realistic?
| I imagine the US as a 2 party system, so if you're
| unsatisfied with the performance with one party and
| unable to vote for the other because of their actual
| political stance...what are you're left with? In germany
| we have a spectrum of pasties and therefore i have second
| choice, a choice to build up pressure against the party I
| am unsatisfied with even if I feel like I belong to this
| party. What do you do? Vote for independents? Do they
| even stand a chance?
| sokoloff wrote:
| > In germany we have a spectrum of pasties and therefore
| i have second choice
|
| That's obviously a typo but, in this context, it's
| hilarious.
| iso1210 wrote:
| With a two party system you join one of them and you
| stand for election to be that candidate.
|
| I'm no expert on San Francisco politics, but looking at
| this
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_San_Francisco_mayoral_
| spe...
|
| suggests the mayor is elected
|
| 1) From non partisan choices (Although as it's SF I
| suspect most will have Democrat leanings)
|
| 2) Using an instant runnoff / ranked choice or similar
| situation
|
| The recent election https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Sa
| n_Francisco_mayoral_ele...
|
| Shows that people seem happy with the current mayor
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_San_Francisco_Board_of
| _Su...
|
| Shows that the "board of supervisors" is an instant
| runoff too, OK not brilliant, but far better than FPTP.
| People don't even bother running in many situations --
| district 9 for example. 16,000 votes would have won that
| election.
|
| Now OK if you aren't eligible to stand for election that
| can be a problem, but surely you find people with similar
| views than you and build a campaign (if you can't find
| them, then your complaints really are fringe).
|
| Complaining about politicians all being the same is easy.
| Doing something about it isn't terribly hard though - not
| at a local level, if there's really a problem. Personal
| 100,000 SF residents to vote for you and you're in as
| mayor. Persuade 20,000 and you're a council member. Of
| course once you have pwoer you then need to fix the
| problems, and that's often far harder than posting a rant
| online.
| Talanes wrote:
| The election that you picked lacked any credible
| candidates outside of London Breed: the rest had spent
| their shot during the special election after Ed Lee's
| death.
|
| In the previous election, she controversially was given
| the role of acting mayor and held it through the
| election, giving her a huge boost of energy from people
| who were willing to just let her stay since she was
| already there.
|
| > Persuade 20,000 and you're a council member.
|
| Well, it's slightly trickier than that. Supervisor
| elections are district-based, so you need to capture a
| specific subset of San Francisco's voters. (And we call
| them Supervisors rather than council members as they
| serve as both city and county representatives for the
| combined city/county structure of San Francisco.)
| Macha wrote:
| To be fair, 11 people died in the construction of the
| Golden Gate bridge, and many bridges of the era fell down
| due to insufficient safety standards. It's not like there
| are no benefits to the extra time of modern construction
| whiddershins wrote:
| That's basically saying we made zero progress at all in
| nearly a century, we just have different values.
|
| This is incomprehensible. Building bridges should be 100x
| as safe, cost 1/10th, and be done in 1/2 the time, by
| now.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| > Building bridges should be 100x as safe, cost 1/10th,
| and be done in 1/2 the time, by now.
|
| This seems like the sort of thing that only a software
| engineer would say. So please, tell me that's not your
| job.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Mate, can we start by honestly and openly criticizing the
| current situation? If we're not even able to criticize
| it, reform feels like a distant fantasy. 90 years a very
| long time. We invented transistors to deep learning.
| Computer-tech has seen tremendous innovation. Physical
| world is completely in a death grip of regulations. I am
| actually fine with regulations where they make sense.
|
| But, it all starts by not throwing rocks at each other
| and name calling. It starts with deep introspection of
| our policies. Try asking your fellow neighbor if they can
| criticize their own party - you'll be met with blank
| stares and profound confusion.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Why would bridges EVER be 100x safer? Twice as safe would
| be a huge transformation for any mechanical engineering
| project. 100x is the sort of process that happens over
| centuries, and is probably asymptotic (there's a limit to
| how safe any physical object in the world can ever be).
|
| Cost 1/10th? Why? The materials haven't become massively
| more available (or changed significantly). The technology
| and therefore the labor involved in building large scale
| civil infrastructure hasn't changed much in at least a
| century, which you seem to view with alarm rather than
| the idea that maybe we're pretty good at it. Costs due to
| regulations represent the growing importance of values
| other than "get it done as cheaply and quickly as
| possible".
|
| Take 1/2 the time? Why? The physical world isn't amenable
| to the same sort of reconceptualization that symbolic
| computation allows. Although the numbers and materials
| have changed over time (e.g. the arrival of the iron
| bridge, or suspension systems), the changes generally
| involve trading off mass (e.g. compared to stone bridges)
| versus complexity and precision. Why would anyone expect
| this to reduce construction time by 50%?
|
| And yes, software has seen incredible strides forward. At
| the same time, sending someone a file is still an
| enormous challenge for most computer users, most software
| has failed to incorporate at least 50% of what we've
| learned about UX over the last 40 years, and most of it
| is still riddled with bugs that are not that hard to
| find. So we have to be a little careful throwing stones
| at those who build material objects.
| whiddershins wrote:
| To clarify I meant 100x as safe for the workers.
| TigeriusKirk wrote:
| Going back to gp's question, though...
|
| Can you openly and honestly criticize the current
| situation?
|
| Not defend, not provide explanations for, but openly
| address and describe problems that exist?
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| I think there's huge room for criticism. But my starting
| point would not "it should be 100x safer, 1/10th the
| price, 1/2 the time".
|
| There have been some excellent links here on HN over the
| last year or two (at least) about difficulties in the USA
| in particular with civil engineering projects. I would
| defer to their much-more informed authors (and the often
| great comment threads here) regarding these matters.
| Clearly, things are "not right" with the time and cost of
| those projects in the USA relative to elsewhere in the
| world.
|
| If we were discussing "world best" rather than US-
| specific, then I'm not so sure if there's the same need
| for criticism.
| whiddershins wrote:
| If you see the multiple orders of magnitude reduction in
| cost to launch satellites we've seen recently, as a
| result of reusing landable rocket stages, how can you
| been so bearish on physical engineering improvements?
|
| Even computing advancements are technically a physical
| engineering triumph, taking the form of increased
| precision in chip creation.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| This is the exact defeatism that I am refering to. We had
| 90 years to invent safe and fast measures to build
| infrastructure. We have failed and its not because it is
| technically infeasable.
| adrian_b wrote:
| I do not know if this was also true in USA, but in many
| European countries, more than one hundred years ago, but still
| also when I was a child, in the rural areas people used to set
| their clocks at the correct hour when they heard the train
| passing.
|
| For some reason, unlike in the old times and despite the
| advanced technology that we have now, wide variations in the
| train arrival times have become common in many countries, even
| if not so extreme as in USA. (Even in Germany, which in the
| past had a reputation for punctuality.)
|
| Perhaps the train companies have become too greedy and they no
| longer allocate the appropriate funds for maintenance, like in
| the old times.
| [deleted]
| midasuni wrote:
| In europe the infrastructure is run far more intensively than
| in the past, a 60 second delay at a station while someone
| holds the doors has a knock on at a busy junction which leads
| to 20 minute delays 100 miles away for the next few hours,
| just like someone cutting in on an interstate can cause a
| brake wave causing delays an hour later 20 miles away.
|
| This intensiveness is to transport the largest number of
| people possible.
| checkyoursudo wrote:
| I just looked for an approximately similar trip in terms of
| distance and dates in Germany. On Monday morning Nov 15, you
| could take a train from Munich to Heidelberg starting at 23.90
| euros (one way), while the first-class ticket (one way) appears
| to be 33.90 euros.
|
| Why are Amtrak tickets so expensive?
| tyrfing wrote:
| That's slightly over the distance of PDX-SEA on the west
| coast, which is currently available for $28-47 depending on
| capacity. The equivalent bus trip (Greyhound) costs $22.
|
| The vast majority of people just drive instead. People doing
| anything except driving is unusual.
| sokoloff wrote:
| I suspect largely because the ridership is so low. There were
| 3.5 million total Acela passengers in 2019 (chosen to avoid
| COVID effects on volume).
|
| Acela is only part of the Amtrak service offering, but it's
| the part they tout as being the best Amtrak has to offer.
| Total Amtrak volume was around 32.5 million trips in 2019
| (unclear if a round trip is 1 or 2 trips, but I assume 2).
|
| In any case, that's slightly under 1 train trip (however they
| are counting it) per 10 US residents per year.
|
| From quick googling, the German comparables seem to be 151
| million long-distance train trips for around 83 million
| people, or around 5x the total usage and 20x the per-capita
| usage.
| spicybright wrote:
| If you converted Euros to USD based on today's exchange rate,
| that's
|
| 23.90 EUR = 27.61 USD
|
| 33.90 EUR = 39.16 USD
|
| As an american that's the lowest I've seen _any_ kind of
| train ticket regardless of distance.
| cozzyd wrote:
| Chicago to Milwaukee is ~$25, though that's only 90 miles.
| spicybright wrote:
| 20 bucks from suburbs to boston round trip. ~18 miles one
| way.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Amtrak charges the market clearing price. There is quite
| frankly a fuckton of demand in the Northeast corridor with
| its 52 million residents along the one line, and not a whole
| lot of rail capacity due to the fact that Amtrak barely has
| money to keep the lights on and the NEC is 100+ years old and
| in need of significant capacity upgrades. (There are only two
| tracks connecting New York to the entire south and west of
| the country, for example.)
|
| Even at the very high Amtrak prices the trains run full.
| hakfoo wrote:
| I think the Acela is comically more expensive than conventional
| Amtrak though. They only offer the premium class seats with
| comical levels of legroom.
|
| I took it once in 2016 (Washington-Baltimore) and it was $45
| one way, and the conventional, ACS-64 and Amfleet coaches
| return trip was $15.
| throwawaysea wrote:
| Are these shared rails with freight priority? I think that is a
| key issue with Amtrak service in most of the country. It is a
| halfway investment that deters further investment due to its
| poor quality of service but with dedicated infrastructure it
| would be very different in performance.
| bwanab wrote:
| Your experience in flying between NYC and Boston on a Friday
| afternoon/evening flight must be really different from mine.
| I've spent hours in one or the other airport at times waiting
| for god knows what "equipment" to become available.
|
| The other side of the coin is that I find I can get a lot of
| work (or book reading, or movie watching) done with a beer in
| my hand on the train.
|
| Obviously different people have different preferences, but I
| wonder sometimes if our preconceived preferences affect our
| perception of the real events we've experienced - that includes
| my own to be sure.
| dylan604 wrote:
| >That would cost $157 plus two Ubers
|
| Depending on market, those two Ubers could nearly double the
| ticket price. I just checked my app, and a ride to the airport
| is $53. It won't be any cheaper coming home. Just a reminder
| that you can't really just write off the cost of the Ubers.
| nevermind the hassle of just dealing with airports
| Talanes wrote:
| GP does have $149 worth of wiggle room to fit those two Ubers
| in and have their point still work, so I think not trying to
| exactly estimate their prices was fine.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Yes, I can do the arithmetic. $300 for a train ticket or
| $150 + $50+ + $50+ is only ~$50 off. Plus, the hassle of
| TSA x2 airports twice. My point is that, all things
| considered, the price difference really isn't that great
| and can be even smaller depending on the flex pricing of
| Uber. I wasn't trying to quibble over a couple of dollars.
| _delirium wrote:
| Interesting, my experience for NYC-DC is completely different.
| It's pretty much always on time, at most 15-20 minutes late, at
| least if you buy NE Regional or Acela. I do avoid buying
| northbound tickets on long-distance routes that originate way
| off (e.g. the Crescent from New Orleans, or Palmetto from
| Savannah), since they can get delayed way before they get to
| DC. I've been taking it every other week or so since August. I
| didn't realize NYC-Boston was that much worse. I also buy my
| tickets way in advance (my schedule is predictable, and Amtrak
| is offering free changes currently anyway) so usually pay
| around $30 for the NE Regional or $70 for the Acela each way,
| which is an amazing deal compared to flying (or even driving).
| bink wrote:
| My experience was similar to yours. It's been a few years but
| I used to commute weekly from DC to NY. Sometimes I'd take
| the Acela and sometimes the regional, depending on price. I
| never had an issue either way. My biggest inconvenience was
| the shitty waiting area and mob of people at Penn Station,
| but even that was better than the TSA lines at the airport
| (or the dreaded Dulles people mover _shudder_ ).
| namdnay wrote:
| The solution seems quite obvious: a big tax on flights,
| reinvested in rail infrastructure. At some point we have to
| help the market find lower carbon solutions, what better way
| than replacing short haul flights with trains?
| sokoloff wrote:
| If you want to tax net carbon emissions, I'm all ears and,
| unless you work very hard to come up with an intentionally
| terrible plan, I'm very supportive.
|
| If you instead want to tax specific conveniences to help
| inconvenient services survive despite their inconvenience and
| lack of improvement, well, let's just say that I'm
| significantly less receptive.
| crooked-v wrote:
| Most of the major issues with Amtrak in the US come down to
| not actually having control over the track that's in use,
| and that's never going to be fixed without a real big money
| infusion.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| surprisingly flying is not that much worse per passenger
| mile, really depends on occupancy. A full flight can be just
| as efficient as a half empty train. (EDIT: consider how many
| passenger miles you get from one flight from NYC to LA, vs
| running two 1000hp diesel engines for 4 days for a similar
| number of passengers)
|
| pollution is a different story, the new amtrak fleet is very
| clean burning, and doesn't dump jet fuel into the ocean, so
| that's a plus.
| laurencerowe wrote:
| Where are your figures from? For electrified lines like the
| NEC emissions will depend a lot on the grid's generation
| mix. For various routes from London the train emits 10-15%
| per passenger of an equivalent flight:
| https://www.seat61.com/CO2flights.htm
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| You're right, electrified lines are very good. The
| majority of Amtrak's routes are diesel.
|
| I don't keep notes on where I read what, but this BBC
| article is fairly thorough, and puts electric trains at
| 40 grams carbon per passenger mile, diesel trains at 90g,
| long haul flights at 102g, and short flights at 133g. It
| mentions that occupancy is a factor but doesn't say if
| those numbers assume full occupancy or are averaged out
| over actual ridership.
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-49349566
| jghn wrote:
| I like the idea of the BOS-NYC Amtrak. When there aren't delays
| it's fantastic. More pleasant trip than flying, no security
| theater, and I'm right in the middle of the city when I arrive.
|
| But to your point, more than half the time I take that trip
| there's some delay on the rails, usually in the CT corridor.
| Redoubts wrote:
| Yeah they usually have to wait for Metro North CT trains to
| move on from commuter stations.
| sokoloff wrote:
| The _idea_ is fantastic. The _reality_ is not.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| The reality is so bad that people would rather ride the
| Fung Wa bus.
| hawaiianbrah wrote:
| Oh man! I remember riding fung wa over a decade ago. Wow,
| time flies.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| they're also speed limited in that CT area because it's a
| residential area iirc, so it's not even full speed service
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Well the commuter trains don't run at the Acela speeds, and
| even if they did they stop and go more often. If you were
| to run the Acelas even faster that would mostly have the
| effect of bumping into the commuter trains in front more
| often. The only way to do this would be to run less
| commuter trains, but those trains are fairly busy, and also
| run by the actual owner of the tracks.
|
| Amtrak's various unfunded fantasies for upgrading the
| corridor have usually included a dedicated pair of tracks
| for Amtrak for a reason. (I say fantasy because the
| proposals are always in the $115B+ range and every time I
| blink the number is probably going up, and that is an order
| of magnitude more money than Amtrak has ever had in its
| life.)
| mst wrote:
| "Not having a system where trains can pass each other
| usefully" is, from a european perspective, exceedingly
| strange.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| There are four tracks, but they are shared by local
| commuter services, rapid commuter services, intercity
| regional services, and the actual high speed trains.
|
| To put this in context, by the time suburban development
| started in earnest in the US, the private railroads were
| in free-fall after the war. It took until the '70s for
| Amtrak to put the (passenger) divisions of said railroads
| out of their misery, and Nixon did not anticipate Amtrak
| surviving the decade; Amtrak was supposed to decline out
| of existence. It never quite did that, but it also never
| quite got back on its feet, and so now the passenger
| rails are quite lacking.
| Tsiklon wrote:
| In London on the main lines out of the main termini it's
| usually 4 tracks abreast with commuter services +
| stopping services taking one pair of tracks and express +
| intercity services taking the other pair for in and
| outbound services. High speed railways (greater than 250
| km/h (155 mph)) are a different story usually running on
| bespoke track.
|
| Is that not the case in the Northeast Corridor?
| bobthepanda wrote:
| There are two tracks leading from Manhattan to the west
| and south of the country. These tracks are shared between
| both commuter trains from the New Jersey suburbs
| (population 4.5 million) and Amtrak. Elsewhere, there are
| still two tracks in places.
|
| The particular problem segment being discussed here does
| have four tracks, but it has commuter, regional, and
| intercity services. This is causing congestion problems;
| IIRC UK HS2 is being built because of a similar problem
| where they need to get the intercity trains out of the
| way of fast regional services.
| jcranmer wrote:
| The New Haven-New Rochelle stretch of track is a 4 track
| corridor. You'd run the intercity trains on the inner
| tracks and the regional trains on the outer tracks.
| However, I don't think Metro North has ever successfully
| had all 4 tracks in operation at the same time...
| jcranmer wrote:
| > riding on the crown jewel of the Amtrak network: Northeast
| corridor Acela.
|
| It is worth pointing out that it's unanimously agreed that the
| worst part of the NEC is the Connecticut segment, especially
| New Haven-New Rochelle, as Metro North is responsible for the
| dispatching there and they do not do Amtrak any favors. Every
| time I'm riding Amtrak on that segment, it feels like the train
| is stuck behind some pokey local commuter rail rather than
| expressing around it, and this is not something I ever felt on
| the MARC, SEPTA, NJT, or MBTA portions of the line.
| dantheman wrote:
| It'd be great if Amtrack could improve its only profitable
| line instead of using it subsidize all the ones that lose
| money.
| jonas21 wrote:
| A few years back, I commuted almost every week between Boston
| and NYC on Amtrak (~80 trips total) and had a very different
| experience.
|
| I took the NE Regional instead of Acela because it was $49 each
| way and only ~30 minutes longer than Acela. With the exception
| of blizzards (which wreaked havoc on everything), there were
| only a handful of times the train didn't arrive within 30
| minutes of schedule (a delay of 10-20 minutes was pretty normal
| - but I just factored that into my schedule).
|
| In that period, I flew the same trip maybe 5 or 6 times, and
| that was more unpredictable. Once, my flight was delayed by
| over an hour. Another time, I spent almost two hours in a Lyft
| getting from JFK into Manhattan due to construction.
|
| Plus, there was the stress of trying to get to the airport on
| time on both ends. And worrying about whether there'd be a line
| at security, and trying to figure out what I'd do if I missed
| my flight. On the other hand getting to South Station and Penn
| Station was easy, I could walk right onto the train, and if I
| thought I was going to miss a train, I could just switch my
| ticket to the next one.
| musesum wrote:
| Housemate is working on solar pod-cars - think of it package-
| switched trains (as opposed to circuit switched)
|
| Takeaway from our conversations: highest pain point is
| floodplains. Like Jakarta, which is sinking. Like Houston, after
| Harvey.
| malchow wrote:
| For those interested in software in this space: https://cedar.ai.
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