I would travel more around the USA if we had a decedent high-speed rail system. Spent too much time flying, red-eyes, and driving for work, 7-12+ hours one way, and hate those modes of transportation. They may get you from point A to B but your time is wasted along with the enjoyment of the trip.
Unfortunately the Oil industry won over the politicians in the USA with donations, legal bribes, and they prevent the building of quality train travel. Bet that if majority of the USA left and spent time in countries with quality rail system, they attitudes would change dramatically and push for better. They would experience how much time they waste in traffic and queuing for boarding and de-bordering.
This is a false conspiracy narrative that belongs on Reddit in the r/fuckcars filter bubble.
Sure, the automotive industry stood to benefit from the decline of rail travel in the US. But they didn’t really need to do anything for that to happen on its own. Reality is far less interesting than that. Turns out when you have tons of fertile land, even pre-industrialization your population tends to spread out a bit (the vast majority of Americans used to be farmers). Today the US has 3-5X less population density than any country with high speed rail. Autos saw massive success in the US due to this fact, and their prevalence reduced the demand for rail travel as a side effect, it wasn’t some top down evil conspiracy.
It’s fun to blame everything on evil big business or evil big government, but it’s also important to look at the first principles and base properties of the issue at hand first.
> Today the US has 3-5X less population density than any country with high speed rail.
This may be true when averaged across the entire country (or even just the lower 48).
But it is absolutely not true if you consider various zones of the country as candidates for good rail service.
Several such zones exist, among them:
1. the north east corridor, perhaps one of the largest and densest conurbations in the world
2. the roughly rectangular shape formed with the NW corner in Minneapolis, the NW corner in Milwaukee, the SE corner in Detroit and SW corner in <wherever the hell that is>
3. The triangle in Texas formed by Dallas/Ft. Worth, Austin and San Antonio
All 3 have higher population densities than those found in non-urban parts of Europe; the latter have good to excellent train service, but none of these 3 do.
The problem is the equivalent driving times aren't crazy on those routes either though.
When you factor in that you need a car in both your departing city and destination city (except for NYC), AND the fact that nearly every household in those regions owns one or multiple cars (which is not true in higher density/higher urbanization countries)...it begins to not make sense especially given the massive upfront cost of construction.
That requires the area around rail stations to be built for pedestrians and bicycles, not cars. That doesn’t seem to be the case in many places in America.
I do take Acela from Central Massachusetts to NYC but mostly because I hate driving into NYC so much. (And don't need a car when I get there.) It basically involves driving an hour in the wrong direction to south suburban Boston. I could drive to New Haven and for a longer drive I'd get a shorter/cheaper trip.
I will speak to the Chicago, Milwaukee, Madison, Minneapolis/St Paul region.
Rail is not going to happen until you don't need a car in those cities. Chicago you could do, but the others are not pedestrian friendly. Anyone traveling within that region will have a 95% chance of already owning a car. Unless the train gets you from Chicago to Minneapolis in an hour, people are just going to drive. The risk with car rental and money spent on Uber's isn't worth it.
I feel like these types of comments come from people that live in NYC or LA. The rest of the country is so fuckin sparse. Your "walkable cities" idea doesn't make any sense and is completely unfeasible outside of major metro areas which land wise in the US is like 99%.
I don't see why Madison doesn't work. I've taken buses to Madison, you can get downtown. You can usually find some transport. Or you can just call a ride share or something!
I've done Chicago -> Madison by bus, and honestly prefer it to the plane at least (even from the airport). More comfortable seats and I get out just at a station. High frequency bus lines feel like good indicators of where some trains could work, and it's not like bus services are dead.
(Similarly, I did Portland -> Eugene on Amtrak and it was nice and chill! I roadshared to my final destination but I had to get from A to B somehow)
I do agree with the idea of building out strong localised networks (and roll my eyes at the "US rail network" dream maps people post out). But my impression from France and Germany at least is that you have two sort of failure modes:
- For France, rural areas don't really have that good of a rail network. Instead there are several trunk lines that are reliable. But it means that east-west stuff is nearly non-existent. Lots of "drive me to the station and drop me off please". Good enough to put France at number 2 in numbers of km ridden per passenger!
- For Germany, the network is much more evenly spread out. But ever German I've met complaints constantly about the unreliability of the trains, combined with the low rate of service. So you end up with stations everywhere, but if a train gets cancelled you could be stranded for hours.
Anyways I do think the French model makes a hell of a lot of sense (prioritizing train frequency over coverage), but it might not be what people are expecting if they just look at a map of trains.
At the time, it seemed that Musk had dished out the Hyperloop proposal just to make the public and legislators rethink the high-speed train.
He didn’t actually intend to build the thing. It was more that he wanted to show people that more creative ideas were out there for things that might actually solve problems and push the state forward. With any luck, the high-speed rail would be canceled. Musk said as much to me [Ashlee Vance] during a series of e-mails and phone calls leading up to the announcement.
Trying to convince internet leftists that a cabal of Evil Capitalists are not behind all of the worlds ills is like trying to convince internet right wingers that most vaccines work.
I don’t really care what is in Elons heart. The lesson learned is the same regardless: ignore the nonsense gadgetbahns dreamed up by business people and focus on the real proven technologies in use already around to world.
An influential person admitted that he had interfered the development of the high-speed railway at US with a vaporware project, which reported to him juicy economic revenues generated by investments and subsidies from all over the world. Just with vaporware.
Should people think that this kind of interference does not happen with influential pockets because you call it a conspiracy, while they call it just business?
I don’t understand the density argument: HST aren’t supposed to connect every places, that’s totally ineffective.
Instead you build rails between major hubs (those that got the biggest airports usually) and add stops on some medium cities that happen to be on the way. It serves those living close enough of the connected cities that want to go close enough to another connected city. _close enough_ depends on the local connection options like regional trains, bus, bikes, trams… and if there’s nothing you just grab a cab or rental car. The city of departure can be reached with your own personal car which is usually a bit cheaper and faster (therefore more range). Most travels destination are big cities or close enough (business, tourism…).
If you ran high speed rail between the two most populated cities in the US (NYC and LA), it'd be a 14 hour journey. And there's not that many conveniently placed major cities along the way where it even makes sense to add more than a few stops.
I know we have a lot of rail enthusiasts here, but the average person tends not to like being stuck in a tube for 14 hours...even if that tube is substantially nicer and more roomy than an airplane.
Let's not even talk about the cost of constructing that route.
For what it's worth, I somewhat agree. High speed rail in particular is super expensive, and airplanes are surprisingly cheap and flexible in comparison.
Here's the source. There were actual-court cases which found that oil and car manufacturers conspired to monopolize and convert local public transit to buses from rail.
"Between 1938 and 1950, National City Lines and its subsidiaries, American City Lines and Pacific City Lines—with investment from GM, Firestone Tire, Standard Oil of California (through a subsidiary), Federal Engineering, Phillips Petroleum, and Mack Trucks—gained control of additional transit systems in about 25 cities.[a] Systems included St. Louis, Baltimore, Los Angeles, and Oakland. NCL often converted streetcars to bus operations in that period, although electric traction was preserved or expanded in some locations. Other systems, such as San Diego's, were converted by outgrowths of the City Lines. Most of the companies involved were convicted in 1949 of conspiracy to monopolize interstate commerce in the sale of buses, fuel, and supplies to NCL subsidiaries, but were acquitted of conspiring to monopolize the transit industry."
This history also plays a large role in "Who Framed Roger Rabbit," as a bit of fun bonus lore...
Local public transit in the US is a very different beast to getting across the country.
Manhattan may have high population density, and the public transit that goes with it; but building passenger rail thousands of miles to the other side of a sparsely populated continent just doesn’t add up in the same way.
No, but the two feed into each other. Intercity rail loses most of its advantages if you have to hire a car at the destination.
> Also I'd argue street cars are way worse than busses which have route flexibility.
They're better for that very reason. You can move somewhere with a decent commute and know that the streetcar isn't going to disappear at the stroke of a pen.
I know that you were talking about individual commutes here. The city of Oslo, Norway was considering having a shared trunk in one corner, where the metro, the streetcar, and the intercity rail all shared a stretch of track. I believe it was to make efficient use of existing right-of-way. I think that there were problems due to electrification (750 V vs 15 kV) and other political problems.
There is a different section in Oslo where the streetcar and metro share a stretch of track using a clever interlocking.
US has a huge social problem that spills into a security one.
Quite unsurprisingly Americans end up isolating from each other in suburbs, often gated neighborhoods with private schools, cars and live overall miserable and unhappy lives.
Can you provide sources for the Big Oil conspiracy you cite? Because nationwide high speed rail isn't as easy - or practical - as you think. California hadn't been able to build a train a fraction of that distance without delays and squandering massive amounts of money.
The PNW has been unable to build it from Portland to Vancouver.
The US is many times larger than any European country or Japan. There are US states similar in size to EU countries with comparable rail networks.
The US literally invented air travel, which made traveling long distances by train largely obsolete.
Aircraft aren't limited to where they can go by rails.
So please explain with all these concrete examples of failure how it's a corporate conspiracy and not general purpose government ineptitude?
Japan is almost all mountains, it's one of the worst geographies to build high speed rail where tunnels and turn radii need to be especially large. But they pulled it off anyway. The bullet train initially only connected metros like Tokyo and Osaka but today runs all the way to many remoter areas. The most recently added line connects Fukui prefecture, population 780k.
The US has many areas with suitable population density to be served by high speed rail, and with more accomodative geography than Japan. It's just that in the US, it was considered fine to use government funds and authority to bulldoze land for the interstate system, but not for high speed rail.
> California hadn't been able to build a train a fraction of that distance without delays and squandering[??] massive amounts of money.
It costs money and time to build HSR. Fine. The J(N)R director who ran the shinkansen project literally lied to multiple levels of government to shield the (2x+) budget overruns. He resigned and then within a year of it opening he was given a medal for extraordinary contributions to Japan.
> Because nationwide high speed rail isn't as easy - or practical - as you think.
Who is claiming that it is easy? However, it is practical! It takes 6 hours to drive Tokyo to Osaka; it's 2hr by train. Trains leave every 5 minutes.
A west coast HSR network is just obviously practical! Beijing-Shanghai HSR is 1300km; SF to Seattle would be the same. It'd be 4-5h on a train. Right now it's 2.5 hours on a plane plus a recommended 1.5 hours for security and boarding plus transfers on each side--I'd rather take a high speed train If I could! SF to LA could be ~3h. 90 minutes on a plane plus lead time and transfer times and it's competitive. Again.
> There are US states similar in size to EU countries with comparable rail networks.
>A west coast HSR network is just obviously practical! Beijing-Shanghai HSR is 1300km; SF to Seattle would be the same. It'd be 4-5h on a train. Right now it's 2.5 hours on a plane plus a recommended 1.5 hours for security and boarding plus transfers on each side--I'd rather take a high speed train If I could! SF to LA could be ~3h. 90 minutes on a plane plus lead time and transfer times and it's competitive. Again.
So just to be clear you are saying at best the time difference between flight and HSR would be minimal - so where is the payoff for the billions the infrastructure would take to build. If it's purely capacity couldn't you spend a fraction of the billions you'd spend on the new infrastructure to bolster the existing system?
I think it's relevant that Shanghai and Beijing are 5x the size of SF and Seattle while construction cost are a significant upfront barrier and don't go down much by needing to service fewer travelers.
Can you cite the reasons that these large countries are capable of building high speed rail while the US is not?
Where is the recent innovation in US air travel? It has gotten considerably worse over the last 30 years. Supersonic passenger flights stopped in 2003 around the same time that TSA added hours to every flight.
I don't know which wealthy, western country you live in, but to be clear in the US Acela trains get up to 150 mph (241 kmh) -- admittedly in a short section, but with other sections that have a top speed of 135 mph (217 kmh). The entire route from Washington to New York has an average speed (including stops) of 90mph (140 kmh).
Should Acela be faster? Probably! But people should be clear-eyed about what the reality of the situation is.
That might be the average scheduled speed, but it’s not my average experienced speed on Acela, with about half the trips seeing significant delays from schedule.
As others have pointed out Russia didn't have high-speed rail. The reason is related to the real reason the US doesn't have it. It's of course density. Relevant US cities are much further apart. You practically need hsr to make it practical at all which prevents incremental improvement of the train system. I hear that's different on the east coast (I've spent very little time there) but it certainly sets culture when for most of the country trains are a bad option.
I mean, the recent innovation in US air travel is that the TSA no longer adds hours to every flight. Like, is it maddening that we're curing a self-inflicted problem? Sure, of course it is. But the railfan community is also stuck in 2010. Every flight I've been on in the last 10 years I've walked through a metal detector, not a scanner, I've kept my shoes and belt on, my laptop in my bag. It's like 2000 all over again, except that now we have to pay a nominal fee every 5 years or whatever it is to use PreCheck.
Everyone should be mad that we dug this hole and then climbed out of it, but people shouldn't pretend that we're still in the hole.
Still, we don't put airports in the middle of built-up downtown areas, and for good reason. You usually have to hail a taxi or bus from an airport, whereas you can step out of a (good) train station and be right where you want to be.
There are good transit connections from Logan airport, but you'd still have to board them. I wouldn't want to walk anywhere from the arrivals terminal on foot. Walking out of South Station is pretty nice though, lots of places I'd want to be nearby.
Billy Bishop is pretty convenient, I think it's quite unusual in that respect. But for the same reason, it's rather controversial and limited in the airplanes it can take, and its future is often in doubt.
Train stations and airports are where they are. Lots of them are quite close to downtowns. Others aren't. Nobody's changing their locations in existing large cities.
There are plenty of cities where the nearest airport is closer than the nearest long distance rail station. There are plenty of cities where they aren't.
I tend to show up fairly early because neither myself nor my limo companies like the stress. But the idea that you need to show up hours early just isn't true in general.
The proof is in the profits that result from a favorable and otherwise illogical set of choices. Who even cares about the details? The oil and related industries are notoriously corrupt, introducing lead into gas knowing the toxic effects among other policy choices aimed at reducing alternatives to cars such as: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_consp...
Where's the logical argument against high speed rail that is based on physical limitations of reality and not simply uh its infeasible because policy?
The logical argument is even if you include my time in the airport on both ends it'll still be faster for me to fly from DFW to NYC or LAX than even the fastest trains of Europe, and probably still cost a comparable amount.
If there was HSR between Houston and Dallas, sure I'd take that. Same for Dallas to Kansas City or something similar to that I'd love that. But that's about the distance where even the extra wait and commute time for the airport balances out the fact the plane is going to be flying straighter and faster. In the end I'm not going to take HSR to go to Orlando or Montreal from Dallas, I'm going to fly.
"High-speed rail isn't meant for DFW to NYC distances. "
Why not? Include comfortable, silenced sleeper cabins and I rather take spend a night in a bed and wake up the next morning rested and fresh, than going through the stress of flying.
For long distances like that, planes are faster and cheaper so the market is smaller. Yes, there will be people who prefer the sleeper train, but more people will prefer a shorter, cheaper flight. For distances under 500 miles, trains usually work out faster once you factor in security, travel to and from the airport etc.
So the top destinations out of Dallas are Atlanta, Denver, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Austin, Phoenix, Houston, Orlando, Chicago, and New York.
So HSR would potentially be competitive with maybe two of the top 10 destinations when comparing to air travel for DFW. I'm a proponent for the Texas HSR projects, but I don't think it's going to really radically change how most North Texans travel.
Partially because of the above (only 2 of the top 10 flights), but also because while it'll be nice to just take a train instead of driving to Houston, I'm probably going to have to rent a car or do a lot of ride hailing once I get there. Outside of a small section of a lot of these cities downtown areas you practically need a car to get around or be willing to make a lot of sacrifices.
So I'd love to take HSR to visit family in Clear Lake. I could take DART from my home, HSR to Houston, take METRO to the Bay Area Park and Ride, and then...walk several miles with my family's luggage a few miles on maybe paved sidewalks with a few kids under 3. Ride hailing is pretty much out of the question with little kids, good luck on them having adequate child seats available.
But I'll still champion and argue for the Texas HSR projects, even though I might personally not use it a lot. Maybe transit will improve where I want to go. I hope so. And even then I'll still probably take it to watch a Silver Boot series sometime. But there will be others who will be able to leverage it, and that means fewer cars on the road for me for these trips I'm somewhat forced to choose the car.
But I don't like people acting like there's no logical reason for HSR to be the dominant way for people to travel in the US. As we both agree, trips like DFW-NYC don't make much sense taking a train for most travellers.
Right. HSR isn't meant to replace all long distance travel. European cities still have very busy airports, and just look at the Ryanair route map: https://www.ryanair.com/en/cheap-flight-destinations. HSR would be ideal for DFW, Austin and Houston, where a triangular route would be very competitive, and I'd imagine would have very high passenger numbers and would replace a lot of plane and car journeys.
The traffic from Love Field would be a better target/comparison, as it's a regional airport. European style HSR doesn't replace international hub airports in europe, either.
You think asking someone else to do the research to prove a conspiracy for you is intellectually honest? Do we really need to get caught up in the details of how health insurance is a conspiracy to know that it is a conspiracy? Do conspiracies need to be coordinated to be successful or can they be informal, unspoken, and implied culturally so as to conceal their existence? Isn't worrying about those specific details actually a distraction? There is already proof that there are better systems by their existence world wide. Why don't you do the research to explain why the richest country in the world doesn't have a high speed train system and write a paper on it? Publish it on Arxiv, include physical reasons that it is not possible.
which part of this was intended to convince me of your initial theory further or lead me to think you are more credible than those you are arguing with?
A ton of new destinations? wow what an amazing improvement! Is it possible that was just inevitable network effect and had nothing to do with intentional investments in R/D?
It's almost as if the development of technology and politics are interrelated. Half the cost of building US airports were subsidized by the government when they added them.
Path of development and real estate prices are related to accessibility. Most of the US is not accessible, there are an equal number of paved and unpaved roads in miles. Consider receiving mail in a rural area where it's going to be 3-5 days for an amazon prime package and the closest store is 30+ miles. If you randomly sample locations in the US you'll find that is actually really common, it's just not experienced by many people. Rail networks aren't about going on vacation, it's about developing real national infrastructure that creates efficiencies that boost multiple parts of the economy.
> A ton of new destinations? wow what an amazing improvement! Is it possible that was just inevitable network effect and had nothing to do with intentional investments in R/D?
No, not possible at all.
Intentional investments in R&D led to more fuel-efficient and long-range aircraft technology such as the B787 and A350 which allowed new point-to-point routes between cities that were never before possible, abandoning the hub-and-spoke model of the past.
Like Auckland-NYC nonstop.
Imagine if they had to build rails between those two.
Your airplane facts are offset by your lack of train culture and ignorance of fundamental infrastructure efficiencies that are offered by high speed trains and not airplanes.
I’m not sure about that. I’d imagine that trains are going to have the worst of both worlds. They will take a long time (closer to amount of time to drive to destination). They also will have costs approaching that of a flight. To me a train trip makes sense if you enjoy trains and feel that the travel itself is part of the reward.
As a US person who has, You need to experience euro train travel. The whole experience, from booking using an app to waiting for a train. You’ll find the apps are good, the schedule information accurate and up to date. The apps don’t do stupid things mostly. When you arrive at the station, you’ll find it generally clean and well maintained. Signage is clear and tied into the train information system. Arrival times accurate. You can get a nice sandwich if the shop is open. Intercity Trains are modern and fast. Lots of power ports to plug in your phone. Nice seats. Also great electronic signage in the train. You might even have good wifi. You would not be afraid to use a bathroom in a station or on a train. Best part is that you CAN rely on the trains. Nothing like Amtrak where if it’s on time it’s remarkable.
Have you ever taken any trains in Europe? I cannot think of any route in any country where I've lived in Europe where driving would be even remotely close to taking the train, and in some cases it's faster than flying. Newcastle to London is 2h40m by train, about 5 hours of driving. Flight is 40 minutes but you're nowhere near the city centre, so once you take into account going through security plus necessary transfer times it's much longer. Brussels to Paris is an hour and a half on the train, driving is at least double that. Krakow to Warsaw is just over 2 hours, the drive is at least 3 hours and that's to the outskirts not city centre to city centre.
Portugal, unless you happen to be a lucky one travelling on the Lisbon - Porto connection line, good luck travelling faster than taking a car, or eventually a long distance bus.
Spain, outside of the lines connecting Vigo, Barcelona, Madrid, Malaga, axis.
Taking a fast train is significantly faster than driving. On short and medium trips they're even competitive with flying, if you factor the time it takes to get to/from the airport and associated lead time associated with airports vs showing within 5-10 minutes of departure right at the city centre.
High speed rail in Europe (mainly France) runs at an average speed of 270km/h (167mph), usually city centre to city centre. It is often more convenient than flying, given check-in times and airport distance from cities. It’s certainly quicker than driving.
I'm a 100% supporter of getting nice trains throughout America, but trains are relatively expensive for long distances. I don't know why, but if you compare ticket prices (globally!) its often not cheaper to take a train. In my experience, trains are a superior experience, and worth spending more on, but generally not cheaper. The ultra-low cost airlines (especially outside the US) are really hard to compete with on price.
For example, the Shinkansen in Japan (which I totally recommend!) is usually over $100 USD. Which is pretty similar to a flight price. This pattern repeats in Europe as well.
My friend just traveled London -> Edinburgh in the last few weeks, and found the train 2x the cost compared to RyanAir or EasyJet.
Even in the US, this pattern holds. Seattle -> LA costs $50-150 by plane, depending on the airline (3hrs). By train, it's 35hrs and $150. Its a lovely train ride, if you have a weekend to dedicate.
Why should we? The difference is a drop on the ocean for the climate. While choosing convenience/price has a immediate impact on yourself.
The rational choice at the individual level is not to care for such things. Actions has to be taken at the political level.
...and because they want you to be on time, you end up waiting for another half hour at the gates to sit in a cramped seat near a narrow aisle.
I went by train to Germany during the autumn of last year and oh man, what a pleasure it was. I got there about 5 minutes before the train, got in, dumped my suitcase and had room to spare.
During the trip I sauntered between carriages, bought some (mediocre) food to scoff down in the restaurant carriage, which I opted to do at my seat rather than right there because I felt like some quiet time rather than the buzz.
Later I traveled by plane to Spain in the spring and as nice as Barcelona was, I couldn't say the same about the plane trip, which was a necessity rather than a pleasure.
Unfortunately the Oil industry won over the politicians in the USA with donations, legal bribes, and they prevent the building of quality train travel. Bet that if majority of the USA left and spent time in countries with quality rail system, they attitudes would change dramatically and push for better. They would experience how much time they waste in traffic and queuing for boarding and de-bordering.