[HN Gopher] How far can you go by train in 5h?
___________________________________________________________________
How far can you go by train in 5h?
Author : mritzmann
Score : 600 points
Date : 2022-07-29 12:25 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (chronotrains-eu.vercel.app)
(TXT) w3m dump (chronotrains-eu.vercel.app)
| informalo wrote:
| Same thing for public transport in metro areas (great if you're
| looking for a new place to live): https://www.mapnificent.net/
| notsapiensatall wrote:
| It would be interesting to see this for the US.
|
| You might be able to get from New York City to Boston within 5
| hours. If you're leaving from Fargo, though, it would be hard to
| make it into neighboring Montana.
|
| Our best case for taking a coast-to-coast train is 72 hours, but
| I've never seen a long Amtrak train arrive on time.
| huggin wrote:
| From Beijing to Shanghai, more than 1000 kilometers
| arnaudsm wrote:
| I'm impressed by the low latency, great job sir
| gregsadetsky wrote:
| Indeed, it's very well done.
|
| Each isochrone is loaded from a static server/CDN -- for
| example https://chronotrains-
| eu.vercel.app/api/isochrones/7100002 -- and that bit of vector
| map data is then rendered using the mapbox gl/js frontend.
| Great work
| Kon-Peki wrote:
| Unfortunately it's been hugged to death.
|
| I wonder if it loads the entire set of isochrones when you
| open the page, given how incredibly responsive it is. I tried
| to share it with someone who would really enjoy it, but alas,
| no luck at all.
| gregsadetsky wrote:
| Aye, it is indeed down, that's sad.
|
| The isochrones are loaded over the network on mouse hover.
| I thought that scheme would keep working and remain fast
| since the loaded vector data is completely static.
|
| I guess the /api/isochrones/<id> url does point to some
| server-side code which couldn't keep up, unfortunately.
|
| Actually, Vercel is returning "This Serverless Function was
| rate limited." and a 429 code i.e. too many requests. So
| it's more of a "hitting the limits of the Vercel plan"
| problem than anything.
| dang wrote:
| Sorry for bringing up buses but that reminds me of this:
|
| _Just how far can you travel by bus from London in 24 hours?_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28262194 - Aug 2021 (128
| comments)
| germinalphrase wrote:
| On Amtrak? Based on my last attempt - that would be zero meters.
| kitkat_new wrote:
| sadly it isn't using real transfer times
|
| I supposed it would be much worse in Germany if real data was
| used
| nicoburns wrote:
| Interesting that it uses 20 minutes. I guess that's optimistic
| if you need to account for delays, but that's much _longer_
| than I often take to transfer (5 minutes often being workable
| if the trains are generally reliable, and you 're able to catch
| a later train if you miss the intended one).
| ben-schaaf wrote:
| Swizerland (SBB) has some nice data on this with 98.9%
| connection punctuality, 40% of connections <5min and 77%
| under 10min. Though they might be an outlier here given the
| integrated timetable.
| majewsky wrote:
| It depends on the station. If you're in Leipzig Central and
| you need to switch from platform 20 to platform 6, 5 minutes
| is very stressful because of the sheer number of platforms
| you need to walk past.
| kitkat_new wrote:
| doesn't this assume that trains constantly leave the station?
|
| In reality there is a train e.g. every hour or so, or even
| none at the same day
| nicoburns wrote:
| > In reality there is a train e.g. every hour or so, or
| even none at the same day
|
| That really depends on your route. Some busy lines in the
| UK have trains every 30 minutes, 15 minutes or even 10
| minutes. Across London, it might be every 5 minutes or even
| every 2.
| andbberger wrote:
| does switzerland dirty
| ramboldio wrote:
| It's sad to see how disconnected the national railway systems are
| in eastern europe. Basically, 5h always fills the national
| borders but no further in Hungary, Romania, Poland etc
|
| E.g., train connections from Czech Republic to southern Germany
| are missing all together.
| nisa wrote:
| > train connections from Czech Republic to southern Germany are
| missing all together.
|
| This is a huge problem IMHO. You always have to use the route
| via Dresden/Prague - it was different in the past - Would be
| really great if there would be some Eurocity Nurnberg-Pilsen or
| Munich-Budweis.
| klohto wrote:
| We all have neglected the networks while claiming to have "the
| biggest rail network". Well, now it's the slowest, and probably
| the most underfunded. The missing connection to South Germany
| don't make sense though. Just take a train to Berlin and take
| DB anywhere.
| nisa wrote:
| > The missing connection to South Germany don't make sense
| though. Just take a train to Berlin and take OBB anywhere.
|
| It's the difference between 6-8h and 2-3h to reach a city in
| Czech Republic. However the tracks connecting Germany/Czech
| Republic in the south are not in good shape if I remember
| that correctly.
| klohto wrote:
| Sure, but the problem is on the Czech part. Once you're in
| Germany, it's pretty fast.
| yorwba wrote:
| The Czech borders are fairly mountainous. If you start in
| Prague, there's a tentacle that just barely reaches Regensburg
| in Germany. It crosses the border in the gap between two
| mountain ranges. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cham-
| Furth_Depression
|
| Building other routes would likely be possible, but only with a
| lot of tunneling.
|
| The Czech-Polish border is similar, I think.
| leto_ii wrote:
| While I agree that rail infrastructure should be improved
| significantly in Eastern Europe, if you look a bit closer
| you'll see that there are many other countries where the 5 hrs
| don't take you much outside of national borders, e.g. Spain,
| Portugal, Italy, the UK, most of Scandinavia etc.
|
| It's also important to note that Ukraine and Moldova run on a
| different gauge, so the border crossing takes some time.
| midasuni wrote:
| The U.K. has nonsense passport and security checks which mean
| trains only go from london and adds a 60-90 minute
| connection. Without those you could easily route Manchester,
| Bristol, Leeds, Birmingham etc via Stratford and the tunnel
| and into much of north west europe in 5 hours.
| phantomathkg wrote:
| Hug of Hacker News. Now all the API returns 429 error.
| omega3 wrote:
| This map is slightly misleading as the areas covered by the train
| stations are huge.
| why-el wrote:
| The app is currently non-functioning, I suppose the HN kiss of
| death (I assume the whole graph was too big to store in the
| browser?)
| activitypea wrote:
| Yep, the client app is up but the API is returning 429 and 500
| sn0wtrooper wrote:
| Hit the RATE_LIMIT of the hosted function.
| hnov wrote:
| The app spams requests as you hover, but should be trivial to
| slap a cache-control: public, max-age=600 so it's served out of
| edge.
| aj7 wrote:
| Explains the explosive growth of European regional and budget
| airlines. Especially with excellent public transportation to
| airports.
| sorenbs wrote:
| We really need Japan on this map :-)
| WaitWaitWha wrote:
| I delight in isochrone maps[0]! There used to be some open
| source, web interfaces but they all became commercial.
|
| An isochrone map is one of the best tools for weekend get-aways,
| job hunting, and finding a home location.
|
| OpenStreetMap[1]! Add it to your site, it will be great hit, in
| my opinion.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isochrone_map
|
| [1] https://www.openstreetmap.org
| jmkb wrote:
| GeoApify[0] is one of these commercial services using
| OpenStreetMap data. They have a no-friction isochrone
| "playground"[1] that's sufficient for casual exploration. You
| can switch the travel mode to "transit" to include train
| routes, but the maximum travel time for the demo is capped at
| one hour.
|
| The results are very different, eg chronotrains-eu.vercel.app
| claims that Wittenberge is within an hour of Berlin
| Hauptbahnhof, but GeoApify won't take you further than Nauen.
| Possibly chronotrains-eu is showing a best-case travel time
| while GeoApify is attempting to calculate realtime travel using
| the current day's schedules?
|
| I doubt the main OSM site would ever host an isochrone demo, as
| it's more of a reference implementation of very basic map and
| routing features that OSM data enables. Notably, the routing
| demos there do not (yet) include any kind of transit mode.
|
| [0] https://www.geoapify.com
|
| [1] https://apidocs.geoapify.com/playground/isoline
| Dagonfly wrote:
| Seems like OPs site is correct. There are multiple
| connections with 54min and occasional ones with 47min.
|
| Though on geoapify you select a a street address rather than
| the train stop. So maybe they add a few minutes buffer for
| walking to the station.
| cridenour wrote:
| I ran a home search startup in 2015 and I will always remember
| the moment my searching finally came up with the name
| "isochrone" and the explosion of research and data that came
| with that. Our home search went from "we'll send you an email
| when its done" to adding fake loading bars to make it seem like
| it was doing more.
| mwint wrote:
| By 2015 Zillow was already well entrenched, what was your
| differentiator?
| etskinner wrote:
| Zillow doesn't have isochrones, for one.
|
| I long for a map experience that's more like a SQL query
| than a catalog, and Zillow's filtering leaves a lot to be
| desired.
| matthewfcarlson wrote:
| I agree, Zillow has lackluster filtering. I've been
| working on something similar for people looking for
| remote work and aren't particular about where they live.
| How did the project end up? What were the good parts and
| the bad parts?
| [deleted]
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Nicely done!
| szundi wrote:
| Useful after robbing a bank
| onionisafruit wrote:
| This is very timely. In September I will have four days of down
| time with my wife in Paris. We want to get out of town but don't
| know where. This gives us some options.
|
| If anybody here has suggestions where we can spend a few days
| taking in non-Parisian France, let me know.
| humanistbot wrote:
| I really liked Strasbourg. France meets Germany in a compact
| historical center, 2hrs each way from Paris on the TGV. Just go
| when the EU government is not meeting there, because for 4 days
| a month, they all have to pack up from Brussels and move to
| Strasbourg. Reims and the Champagne region are on the TGV to
| Strasbourg as well, making that an easy day trip from Paris.
|
| There are also the night trains (Intercities de Nuit), which go
| from Paris to some destinations at the periphery of France that
| are way too long for a normal day trip. It is usually 4 or 6
| bunks in a room, but you can pay extra to book the entire room
| for the two of you. Go to sleep in Paris and wake up 12 hours
| later in Nice on the Med coast, Briancon (ski resort town in
| the Alps, great in Summer too), or any of the medieval towns in
| the Pyrenees near Spain (Carcassonne, Narbonne, Perpignan)
| onionisafruit wrote:
| Thanks for the Strasbourg tip. That's one of the places I was
| looking at based on the map. The German cultural influence
| drew me in. Thanks to your comment I checked the EU schedule
| and found they will be in Strasbourg at the same time.
|
| I like the idea of a night train, but there is a significant
| chance either my wife or I won't be able to sleep. That would
| make the next day unpleasant, so we'll save the night train
| for some time when we have a few more days to spare.
|
| Now we are thinking Dijon.
| nixass wrote:
| Strasbourg will be a connector for Paris to Vienna line.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Line_for_Europe
|
| It will take 4hrs from Paris to Munich (900km)
| thedudeabides5 wrote:
| The next time we need to print $1Tr we should build a high speed
| rail from SF to NYC, via Detriot.
|
| #NeoIntercontinentalRailroad
| rootusrootus wrote:
| You probably couldn't build HSR from SF to Detroit to NYC for a
| trillion bucks. But it would be an interesting project
| nonetheless. With strategic stopping points, I wonder how the
| population dynamics for the flyover states would change.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| FYI: I had to disable uBlock in order for the site to work.
| [deleted]
| yreg wrote:
| I think this should be rendered in 3D on a globe so it's easy to
| compare the covered distances between different places.
| jobigoud wrote:
| If you use right-mouse-button it goes into perspective view but
| the Earth is flat...
| dimitrios1 wrote:
| You can go from Edinburgh to London in 5 hours or less, that's
| pretty damn cool.
| gield wrote:
| From Brussels, Belgium, you can reach in 5h:
|
| - Wales and deep into northern England (Newcastle
|
| - the whole western border of Germany
|
| - the south coast of France
|
| - Switzerland
|
| I was never into the whole "center of Europe" thing, but this
| puts things in a different perspective.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| I find the boarder between France and Span fascinating. It looks
| very hard to cross that boarder by train.
| [deleted]
| Yizahi wrote:
| Ukraine data is incorrect, before latest invasion we had multiple
| semi-fast trains reaching 120-140 km/h between regional centers.
| Though if it is snapshot of current state of affairs then it can
| be like that, a lot of trains were canceled or slowed due to war.
| maeln wrote:
| You can really see the Paris-centric approach in France: From
| Paris you can reach almost any other major city in 4h, but on the
| other hand, all the other metropolis can barely reach 1/4th of
| the other major population center in 4h.
|
| Compare this to Germany where almost _any_ major metropolis can
| reach 80% of the country in 4h ...
| twelvechairs wrote:
| Metropolitan france is 54% larger than Germany so its not a
| fair comparison
| quelltext wrote:
| Huh?
|
| How can metropolitan France be larger than the entirety of
| Germany?
| DanBC wrote:
| "Metropolitan France" is the area of France that's in
| Europe, and that's 543,940 km2.
| samatman wrote:
| Because Metropolitan France (note the capitalization) is
| how the European portion of France is referred to: compare
| with Overseas France, which includes territories in South
| America and Oceania, to be non-exhaustive.
| corrral wrote:
| This is a difference in attitude between Americans and
| French when describing their countries: the French tend
| to regard overseas territories as more vitally _part of
| their country_ than Americans do. Not sure why, possibly
| it was a deliberately-cultivated attitude by the
| government at some point, or maybe the difference arose
| organically. Meanwhile I think a lot of Americans kinda-
| unconsiously barely even consider Hawaii and Alaska
| _really_ parts of America, let alone the numerous non-
| state territories.
|
| Actually, now that I think about it, the sense of
| "Metropolitan France" is very similar to the term "the
| continental United States"
| ryukafalz wrote:
| American here, I'd disagree about Hawaii and Alaska but
| agree about the non-state territories. The non-state
| territories being unable to vote and not having
| representation in the legislature means that they don't
| get as much attention in national politics, so they're
| less top of mind. (Yes, both of those situations suck and
| I wish we would change them.)
| hunterb123 wrote:
| They don't have representation (in the US) and are unable
| to vote (in US elections) because they aren't US citizens
| and don't pay (US) taxes.
|
| But if you're a US citizen living over there and you made
| money from sources other than from that territory, you
| would have to pay US taxes.
| mrgriscom wrote:
| Residents of the US territories are US citizens with the
| exception of American Samoa
| hunterb123 wrote:
| Technically yes by the Jones Act, in a very limited
| sense... there are restrictions as well as tax
| exemptions.
|
| So I wouldn't really consider citizens of US territories
| full US citizens.
|
| So maybe it's more appropriate to say they aren't
| Americans, but they are US citizens.
|
| But that is all semantics. My main point was the reason
| they don't have US representation is they don't have US
| taxation.
| zwaps wrote:
| Germany has more than twice the population density compared
| to France - and much less variance of it
| [deleted]
| OJFord wrote:
| Infamously similar in the UK, even despite being smaller.
| Particularly East-West travel anywhere much North of London.
| Many inter-city routes are via London.
|
| (I'm not complaining, j'habite a Londres ;))
| xenocratus wrote:
| > anywhere much North of London
|
| You don't need to go that much North - I used to live in
| Oxfordshire, trying to get to Cambridge for work was a joke
| (I don't drive). It would take 3.5h+ for a 140km journey from
| Oxford to Cambridge because train journeys were only through
| London (+ a railway station change), and there was only one
| coach that stopped in every town along the way (and which has
| been axed into two separate legs since the pandemic, making
| it 4h+ now).
|
| In the end I moved to London, so that's manageable now...
| OJFord wrote:
| I didn't mean _much_ North! Heh, another of those BrE words
| like 'quite'.
|
| Oxford/Cambridge is a classic example, yes. (For those
| unfamiliar, they're like two spokes right next to each
| other on quite a small rim where London is the hub. But
| large enough (or close enough spokes) that 'in and back
| out' seems silly.)
| ErikCorry wrote:
| This is actually being fixed. Someone put huge telescopes
| on part of the old line, but they are building a new one.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_West_Rail https://en.w
| ikipedia.org/wiki/Mullard_Radio_Astronomy_Observ...
| rjh29 wrote:
| South West connectivity is fine, you can get from Plymouth to
| Exeter to Bristol to Birmingham and up to Edinburgh without
| going anywhere near London.
| midasuni wrote:
| At an average speed that makes a horse blush, and a
| capacity that is barely more than a Vauxhall corsa.
|
| Cross country routes are local trains masquerading as long
| distance, thus with ridiculous prices and the requirement
| to do split tickets. There's nowhere near enough capacity
| on the line.
|
| Penzance to Exeter takes 3 hours - half the speed of a
| drive. From Exeter to Birmingham it's another 2h30 at just
| 60mph average.
|
| A good line would be an hour faster on both legs.
| throwaway-blue2 wrote:
| You'd be hard pushed to drive Penzance to Exeter in
| 1hr30, more like 2 hours really. And whilst the train is
| slow the journey is lovely along the Exe estuary and then
| along the coast. Having said that it is a bit silly that
| when going from London to Penzance most of the time is
| spent on the final third of the journey past Exeter.
| OJFord wrote:
| The South West is er not at all 'North of London' though,
| last I was there (where I was 'born and raised').
|
| We also don't really have any of the major cities I meant
| in that context, Bristol I suppose. How do you get from
| Bournemouth to Bristol for example - via Dorchester with a
| station change? How about Southampton to Exeter - via
| Bristol? It's by no means the worst region, and I claimed
| the opposite, but it still suffers in the same way (albeit
| on a smaller scale) really, NW-SE rather than W-E in the
| North, in both cases its opposing the 'spokes' into London.
| rjh29 wrote:
| > The South West is er not at all 'North of London'
| though, last I was there (where I was 'born and raised').
|
| You said "particularly North of London", not "only"...
| flipbrad wrote:
| Strasbourg seems fairly well-connected, too
| cjrp wrote:
| Presumably because it's where the European Parliament is
| based
| darkwater wrote:
| Or Spain with Madrid-centric approach.
| marcolussetti wrote:
| At least Madrid is roughly in the center of the Peninsula,
| whereas London is quite a bit off that.
| izacus wrote:
| And then you have Brussels, center of EU which has a massive
| reach.
| jobigoud wrote:
| The asymmetry from my home town of Bordeaux in the South West
| is striking, towards the North I can reach Brussels, 763 Km
| away, but going South I can barely enter Spain which is only
| about 200 Km away!
| aj7 wrote:
| These are countries the size of Oregon.
| umanwizard wrote:
| France is way bigger than Oregon (it's about the size of
| Texas)
| TurkishPoptart wrote:
| I'm clicking on these cities/populated train station names but
| don't see any colors populating. Using Chrome here.
| caradine wrote:
| I'd love to see this for the U.S. as well, if only to highlight
| the contrast
| webnrrd2k wrote:
| 3,353 x 10^9 miles, or 5 light-hours, is the absulute theoretical
| max. So, in practice, something less than that?
| KronisLV wrote:
| > This map shows you how far you can travel from each station in
| Europe in less than 5 hours.
|
| Aww, seems like Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia aren't a part of
| Europe, then.
|
| But jokes aside, the visualization itself is pretty cool, though
| it might also be really useful to be able to put emphasis on the
| actual train tracks, especially in the further zoom levels,
| though map implementations don't always allow this to be done
| easily, without too much customization or running your own tile
| server.
| marcosscriven wrote:
| I'd love to see the Eurostar on there. A colleague was stunned I
| could get from London to Brussels in two hours.
| joosters wrote:
| It is on there - highlight Brussels and it'll show that you can
| reach Newcastle within five hours. That's only possible if you
| go via Eurostar.
| butz wrote:
| Why some parts of Europe is missing, e.g. Greece? Source seems to
| have data for it. Also, it would be neat to see more countries of
| the world mapped out: Japan, US for a start.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| I'd be very interested in China's, given their recent work on
| high speed rail.
| goodpoint wrote:
| Sometimes city walkability is expressed more simply: each spot
| gets a color based on the size of the area that you can reach in
| a fixed amount of time.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isochrone_map
|
| So you don't have to manually explore the map.
| NeoTar wrote:
| Sadly, the trains on the Isle of Wight (off the South Coast of
| England, south of Southampton and Portsmouth) is not included.
|
| I'd be interested in their perspective since you can buy a
| 'train' ticket which includes a ferry crossing, so the isochrone
| would either extend up to London and beyond (if you allow the
| ferry), or be restricted to just the island itself (if you do
| not).
| thejackgoode wrote:
| Five hours, I assume, is the maximum amount of time an average
| person can enjoy sitting in a train. With overnight trains making
| a comeback, there are much more possibilities. I recently enjoyed
| falling asleep in Central Europe and waking up over the Alps near
| the sea. Trains are amazing.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| It's more comfortable to be on a train than a flight and people
| are happy taking ten hour plus flights no problem.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Only because there are no viable alternatives to a 10 hour
| flight. But the alternative to a 10 hour train ride is a 1-2
| hour flight.
| Aachen wrote:
| To be fair, you also get about three to four times the
| distance per minute out of it (850km/h pretty much the whole
| way as the crow flies vs 250 average if you're lucky plus
| curves).
|
| To be clear, I find it absurd that airplane companies are
| still allowed to sell tickets without pricing in
| externalities for trips with good and high-speed train
| connections like Paris-Madrid. However, for actually going
| somewhere far away there just isn't really another choice but
| to take that plane. Your only other choice is to never go
| there at all, or take out weeks of travel for a ship or
| something. It's still too cheap, at least those that go
| regularly can also afford for Climeworks to undo their
| environmental pollution, so I hate to be defending air travel
| here, but 10h flights are a different ball game than 10h
| train rides.
| kurthr wrote:
| You can also go Beijing to Shanghai in 4.5 hours. That's over
| 1200km or 750mi averaging above 260km/hr.
|
| I think it's the fastest long distance passenger service
| available and has the benefit of being central Shanghai to south-
| central Beijing (rather than north-east where PEK airport is).
| That made it noticeably better than business air travel between
| the two cities.
|
| You could also ride the Pudong maglev (at 430km/hr peak and
| 250km/hr average), but it was never extended from PVG to Jing An
| and the main Shanghai station.
|
| However, now you have to go through security at each end which
| adds at least 1.5hr, and that's ignoring pandemic restrictions.
| kurthr wrote:
| Then there's Tokyo-Shinagawa to Fukuoko-Hakata which is 1100km
| and 4.75hr averaging 230km/hr, which is quite fast and easy to
| take with minimal waits.
| rjh29 wrote:
| Will be even faster once they get maglev.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| Beijing to Hongkong is about 2,450km and takes 9h by high speed
| train, which is more than 270km/h average as there are a few
| stops along the way. I believe that the advertised speed is
| about 350km/h.
| DiogenesKynikos wrote:
| The Beijing-Shanghai line now averages 292 km/h (that's
| including stops - the train's top speed is 350 km/h).
|
| Maybe even more impressive, the trains cover the first 1018 km,
| from Beijing to Nanjing, at an average speed of 316 km/h.
| qalmakka wrote:
| As a European it boggles my mind seeing how trains are basically
| non-existent in the USA (just look at Houston station), given how
| dominant the whole "Wild West" railroad rush is in everybody's
| immagination. Railroads are super ubiquitous here, and we've to
| work with a pretty hostile terrain - Italy has lots of mountains,
| hills, rivers, and yet has one of the best networks in the world.
| Most of the USA are basically empty, it would be pretty easy to
| build high-speed rail.
| decafninja wrote:
| I'm visiting Italy in a month and have multiple tickets booked
| on Italo's Club Executive class. The seats look sweet and the
| price was surprisingly affordable. Looking forward to see how
| good it is.
| [deleted]
| js2 wrote:
| Italy compared to U.S.:
|
| https://www.thetruesize.com/#?borders=1~!MTY3OTMzNjA.NTkxNzE...
|
| U.S compared to Europe:
|
| https://www.thetruesize.com/#?borders=1~!MTc4NDEwOTE.MjkxMDg...
|
| My daughter, visiting home from college this weekend, took
| Amtrak from Richmond, VA yesterday. She's taking the train back
| Monday. Without delay, the train takes about 4 hours. Driving
| takes about 3 hours. Add an extra 15 minutes on each side for
| getting to/from the station, so 4:30 hours vs 3 hours. Distance
| is 150 miles (241 km).
|
| Cost of the train is $42 (coach) each way. Cost of gasoline
| would be ~ $24 each way.
|
| Her train yesterday departed about 30 minutes late and arrived
| an hour late. Supposedly it may have been traveling slower due
| to the heat wave.
|
| Here's a live map of the Amtrak network:
|
| https://www.amtrak.com/track-your-train.html
|
| That's just our national train system. Many municipalities have
| their own patchwork of train networks. Some off the top of my
| head: BART, LIRR, MTA, MBTA T, Metro (D.C., Atlanta), L
| (Chicago), Metrorail (Miami).
| wbsss4412 wrote:
| > Cost of the train is $42 (coach) each way. Cost of gasoline
| would be ~ $24 each way.
|
| The cost of driving is more than just the cost of gasoline.
| bluGill wrote:
| Not if you already own the car. Then the cost of the car
| and insurance are sunk costs that do not count. Sure there
| is a little wear and tear, but that adds just a couple
| bucks.
|
| If you buy a car/rent for that trip alone, then the cost of
| driving is far higher. However for most Americans the cost
| of a car is a sunk cost that cannot be counted. If you live
| someplace where it is possible to live without a car, then
| you can make that argument, but most of us do not.
| wbsss4412 wrote:
| The resale value of the car, insurance (even if you don't
| do pay per mile, insurance quotes are generally going to
| have some basis in miles driven per year), and
| maintenance are all directly correlated with miles
| driven. So, while these are often treated as sunk costs,
| that is due to improper accounting.
|
| So, to reiterate, the cost of driving is much more than
| the cost of gas.
| notagoodidea wrote:
| I do a similar travel distance (between 213km - 230km by car
| on the highway) monthly minimum between Amsterdam - Brussels
| taking the inter-regional train (NS) (understand the "slow")
| : 2h45 for around 25-29 EUR each way if booked a few days in
| advance. The fastest one with the Thalys is 1h55 for around
| 90EUR. Driving take around the same time than the slowest way
| ~2h30.
|
| The Amtrak trains are slow? I mean even adjusting for the
| potential 40 to 10km difference and the fact that the NS does
| between 8 to 10 stop depending where you want to go out in
| Brussels or Amsterdam, 4h for a 241km trip is slow.
|
| It is a bit cheating as if you want to do Brussels - Arlon, a
| 190-ish km trip inside Belgium, it will take you 2h45. And if
| you want to more or less cross Belgium from North to South
| (Oostende to Arlon), 310-ish km trip will take you around
| 4h15 by train and between 3 to 4h by car due to the fact that
| you will take the Brussels ring road. So small country, yep.
| Still 4h for 241km is slow.
| goodpoint wrote:
| The "murica is big" excuse is silly.
|
| What really matter, obviously, is population density. And
| population density would justify passenger railways on the
| coasts and in more than half of the US:
|
| https://www.ecoclimax.com/2016/10/population-density-of-
| worl...
|
| Additionally, it's also based on the flawed assumption that
| transportation should adapt to the locations of where people
| live rather than the other way around.
| redtexture wrote:
| The IRS allows business travelers 58.5 cents a mile.
|
| That is closer to your total cost of use of your automobile.
|
| IRS 2022 Business milage rates:
|
| https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/irs-issues-standard-mileage-
| rat...
| aimor wrote:
| I thought that was so high, so I ran the numbers using some
| median and average values and I got pretty close.
|
| The average vehicle costs $40k, is owned for 11 years, gets
| driven 13k miles per year, burns 25 mpg, gas costs $3/gal,
| insurance is $1500 per year, and the vehicle needs $900 per
| year in maintenance and repairs.
|
| A lot of people spend far less than this (my car cost me
| $0.384/mile so far), and some spend far more, but it's not
| a bad approximation.
| redtexture wrote:
| Businesses generally are allowed to depreciate
| automobiles over five years, and you might guess it is
| because they get a fairly high amount of use.
|
| And built into the IRS rate is probably an expectation of
| significant repairs.
|
| That changes the capital costs.
|
| Most people are paying 4.00 to 5.00 dollars a gallon
| these days.
|
| At a generous $4.00 a gallon, and as you indicate, .04
| gallons per mile, gas alone is lately above 0.16 cents a
| mile. At $5, that would be 0.20 cents.
|
| Generously (on the thrifty side) estimating, at minimum,
| capital, insurance and maintenance doubles cost of
| gasoline alone.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| Trains "work" in Europe because many European cities are easily
| walkable. The trains (and other public transportation) comes
| every 10-15 minutes, so you can leave and arrive when you want
| to.
|
| Now, consider the convenience of traveling by car: You can
| leave and arrive when you want to. For a longer journey, you
| don't need to deal with transferring between
| trains/busses/whatever, which means that you can keep your
| luggage in your car until your destination. Chances are, you
| can park your car at your destination or very close.
|
| As far as sprawl: In some places, building codes require more
| land. Other times, banks won't lend to build unless the land is
| worth a certain percentage of the building. For example, when I
| built my house, the bank wanted the land to be worth about 25%
| of the value of the house; and the town required that it was so
| many feet away from the road. That forced my neighborhood to
| have large, open lawns. (And as much as I love my lawn, I'd be
| just as happy with a postage stamp yard too.)
|
| There's also the rumor that the US was deliberately built to
| sprawl after WWII as a way to survive a nuclear attack. I don't
| know if that's true or a rumor, though.
| DrBazza wrote:
| I'm not convinced high speed rail would ever work in the US due
| to how entrenched the car culture is, regardless of the
| terrain.
|
| In Europe with we have spoke-and-hub railways - want to get
| into London? There's almost certainly a local station near you
| in the suburbs. Then jump on the Eurostar to Paris. Get to
| Paris, and then get a local line back out to wherever you want
| to go.
|
| Right now, it would have to be airport like terminals, and a
| multi-decade (if not century long) plan to connect the city
| centres.
|
| In the US, drive to the new high speed mainline station outside
| the city, where there would have to be as much parking as an
| airport, and then get the high speed line to the destination,
| and then... hire a car?
|
| Building a mainline station in many US city centres for high
| speed lines isn't going to work right now. There are too few
| local lines going in, and nowhere to build super-sized car
| parks.
| joe_91 wrote:
| Travel between countries in Europe is improving every year
| too. Next week I'll be traveling from Bordeaux to Berlin
| (over 1,600km) - it's faster than the car (16 hours by car vs
| 12 hours by train), and cheaper than flying, in the summer at
| least (150 euro by train, vs 300 euro by plane - booking 6
| weeks before).
|
| That will improve next year too with the direct Paris Berlin
| train that should only take 7 hours.
| melling wrote:
| Would never work because of our car culture? I'm going to use
| my imagination on this one since "never" is a long time.
|
| The year 2040. Two technologies combine make never a reality.
|
| 1. Maglev trains that travel at 350 miles per hour (600kph)
|
| 2. Self-driving taxis
|
| Exhibit 1:
|
| https://www.cnn.com/travel/amp/china-fastest-maglev-train-
| in...
|
| NY to LA in 10 hours by maglev sometime in this century.
|
| The 4 hour maglev between Miami and NYC will be popular.
| bluGill wrote:
| China is backing off their high speed maglev trains. While
| it is possible to make maglev go that fast, wind resistance
| means it is far to costly. A large airplane (because it
| runs at 30,000 feet) is not only faster, it uses less
| energy.
|
| If vacuum trains ever happen, then things change. However
| those are very expensive to build, and have safety issues.
| We can solve the engineering problems with safety, but the
| expense doesn't seem possible)
| DrBazza wrote:
| I did sort of contradict myself there and say never and
| multi-decade plan.
|
| Problems the US has:
|
| * Lack of spoke and hub railways.
|
| * Cars.
|
| * Cost-per-mile, which if I understand correctly is a
| political and a union-thing.
|
| * And just politics by itself.
|
| It's not dissimilar in the UK, but somehow we muddle
| through it. I don't believe that "cheap" maglev will ever
| help the US, it's been around for decades, and the longest
| highspeed line built by the Chinese is 19 miles at a cost
| of "only" $1.3 bn (I'll leave it up to the reader about how
| realistic that construction cost would be in the West).
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maglev#China,_2000-present
|
| The US will still have the same problem huge construction
| costs, political lobbying from the airlines, no hub and
| spoke railways, a vast airport style set of car parking
| around any terminals that are built.
|
| The West now suffers from pointless adversarial politics
| where the opposition votes the opposite to the government
| simply "because", and for no rational reason other than
| "it's the other party". Even once you get past that hurdle,
| it's how "cheap" is the cheapest bidder. Labour/labor laws
| and so on.
|
| I would genuinely love to see the US lead the world with
| high speed rail, but I just can't see it.
| runarberg wrote:
| In the current planed and under construction high speed rail
| in the USA by far most large city stations are planned to go
| in (or near) the city center. Texas Central (planned) is only
| planning on building 2 big city stations which the go to the
| outskirts of Houston and Dallas respectively.
|
| Meanwhile California High Speed Rail (under construction) is
| planning to build stations in downtown San Francisco (and
| anther close to the city center, and a third by the Airport
| in Millbrae), close to downtown San Jose, downtown Fresno,
| close to downtown Bakerfield and downtown Los Angeles.
| Palmdale is the only city over 100,000 which gets a station
| in the city outskirts in California, and Burbank gets one by
| the airport.
|
| I'm guessing California High Speed Rail did the work and came
| to the opposite conclusion of yours, that it does--in fact--
| work to build mainline stations in many US city centers.
| andjd wrote:
| The USA has a world-class _Freight_ rail network, and almost
| all existing track in the country is owned by the freight
| operators, who manage the track to optimize it for freight
| operations. In many cases, they are openly hostile to passenger
| service on their tracks.
|
| On top of this, most cities in the USA were built (or destroyed
| and rebuilt) for private cars being the primary mode of
| transportation. In Europe, one of the benefits of taking the
| train over an airplane is that the train stations will often be
| in a walkable city center with a good connection to public
| transit. In the USA, outside of a handful of older cities (New
| York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston . . .), the train station
| drops you off in the middle of nowhere, usually with far less
| connections and services than the airport has. When compared to
| air travel, intercity rail travel is often slower, less
| convenient, less frequent, and more expensive.
|
| Even with the Acela/northwest corridor, flights are often
| cheaper than rail, so it is the convenience of the downtown
| stations and connections to public transit that drive people to
| take the train over airplanes. It's no coincidence that the
| major cities on the route (DC, Philiadelphia, NYC, Boston) are
| also cities with some of the best metro networks in the
| country.
| eptcyka wrote:
| Flying is cheaper than using trains in EU too.
| sgjohnson wrote:
| Especially in the UK. It's cheaper to take a flight between
| Manchester and London than jt is to take a train.
|
| But the train is the more convenient option, because you
| don't have to deal with the security circus at the airport.
| midasuni wrote:
| I've never seen a return Manchester to london flight for
| PS40, yet I can walk up to picadilly, but a ticket, board
| the train tomorrow and be in london in about 3 hours.
| nickbauman wrote:
| No it doesn't have a world class freight rail network. The
| North American rail infra is incredibly primitive. Most of it
| is "dark territory" (no track sensors), unlike Europe. I used
| to write rail automation software for a German firm. They
| were appalled at the state of affairs here. One of the most
| lucrative rail systems in the US had an average speed of
| their trains in the single digits MPH!
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| > Most of it is "dark territory" (no track sensors), unlike
| Europe.
|
| Have you seen the USA? The places where they lack track
| sensors are basically out in the middle of nowhere with no
| one around for miles.
|
| > One of the most lucrative rail systems in the US had an
| average speed of their trains in the single digits MPH!
|
| That really isn't bad for freight. They optimize freight
| for throughput, not latency (something passenger rail is
| more concerned with).
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Track sensors are especially useful in they middle of
| nowhere.
|
| And there are plenty of latency sensitive applications
| for freight rail which are developed in other places.
| They don't make sense in the US because the capability
| isn't there, not because there's no market for it.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| > They don't make sense in the US because the capability
| isn't there, not because there's no market for it.
|
| There really isn't. Freight companies are responsible for
| maintaining investing in the rail, and if it doesn't make
| them money, they aren't going to put it there. Heck, a
| lot of places are single rail (meaning, no two way
| traffic at the same time), because it doesn't really make
| sense to dump more money into an extra set of tracks in
| those places.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Again, you're conflating things. There is a market for
| low latency rail freight. The rail companies find that
| it's better to keep the rail as is and invest the profits
| somewhere else. That doesn't mean that the market doesn't
| exist.
|
| The correct approach is for low latency rail freight to
| operate on passenger rail systems which already have the
| necessary speeds and flexibilities. This is structurally
| unfeasible in the US but it's still definitely a market
| that better rail systems can service at no extra cost.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| The freight companies own the railway, they optimize the
| rails for freight, which is why we move much more freight
| by train than Europe. Passenger service is something they
| do for the federal government subsidy and nothing more.
|
| And actually, sharing tracks between passenger and
| freight service is something that they don't really do in
| Europe. Because they share tracks, American passenger
| trains have to build at a weight on part with freight
| trains. Most lines in Europe separate out passenger and
| freight service lines so they can run lighter trains for
| passenger service.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| A big part of why the US moves more by rail is simply
| because it moves more goods overland than in Europe.
|
| Low latency freight for smaller, high value items is
| often done on passenger lines (or even passenger trains)
| because it doesn't put any scheduling pressure on
| passenger service.
|
| As far as use of freight in Europe, the elephant in the
| room is that the EU uses a lot more sea freight than the
| US. Indeed, while the modal split for EU trucking is
| around 50%, it's around 70% in the US, and it thus seems
| clear that the real reason that there is less rail
| shipping within Europe is because there is much more
| competition from maritime shipping.
| skellera wrote:
| I think it's easy to call something out as primitive but
| what changes could be made and how much impact would it
| have? It doesn't seem like our freight trains are the
| bottleneck when moving goods around the country.
| ant6n wrote:
| They kind of are if you consider how many goods are still
| shipped by trucks.
|
| The US is perfect for rail - lots of long trips, with
| lots of goods. It could probably have more market share
| if goods could move more quickly and flexibly.
| bluGill wrote:
| While there is a lot US rail could do to get more
| freight, the fact is we send a lot more freight by rail
| than Europe.
| _delirium wrote:
| Just to add some numbers, the freight modal splits as of
| 2018 (most recent year with complete data), measured in
| tonne-kilometers, for a few countries [1] and the EU
| taken as a whole [2]:
|
| US: 45% road, 38% rail, 17% other (water/pipeline)
|
| France: 75% road, 15% rail, 10% other
|
| Germany: 62% road, 25% rail, 18% other
|
| Spain: 92% road, 4% rail, 4% other
|
| EU: 76% road, 19% rail, 5% other
|
| [1] https://stats.oecd.org/BrandedView.aspx?oecd_bv_id=tr
| sprt-da...
|
| [2] https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-
| explained/index.php...
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| And how much tonnage moves on your "smart" rails? I'll let
| you pick the metric.
| cptcobalt wrote:
| Imo, your choice of scare quotes around "smart" telegraph
| your unwillingness to consider even a well-founded data
| informed argument, for what it's worth.
| jakear wrote:
| > Please respond to the strongest plausible
| interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one
| that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.
|
| GP asked for a well founded data-based argument, assuming
| they don't actually want that is in bad faith.
|
| I agree with GP that the connection between sensors and
| high speed to better freight rail is tenuous, whereas
| large amounts of tonnage moved more clearly indicates
| good freight rail.
| cptcobalt wrote:
| I'm surprised by the general opposition to your comment. I
| agree. US transit infrastructure, including rail, is
| anything _but_ world class. Sure, we move _tons_ of
| freight, but is that the standard alone?
|
| Just because it works doesn't mean it can't be improved
| better. It's always ok to reject the "don't fix it if it's
| not broken" mentality.
| SllX wrote:
| In the context of freight, it is the lone standard
| because as another commenter pointed out, throughput is
| more important than latency in bulk goods transport
| whereas latency is a much more important variable when
| passengers are involved.
|
| US rail owners and operators know what the variables are
| that they care about and their customers care about are,
| and also what insurance companies care about and as a
| result, they are adept at moving goods coast to Great
| Lakes to coast, across the Appalachians, Missouri-
| Mississippi river system, the Great Plains, the Rockies,
| the Great Basin, the Sierra Nevadas, the Cascades and the
| California Coastal Range.
|
| If they're not using some software package or have
| complete sensor coverage on their tracks, they probably
| judged that they don't need it. If a competitor actually
| finds advantage with these things tomorrow, then they
| will all adopt it.
| twawaaay wrote:
| I think the term "world class" is unfortunate with
| connection to freight rail networks.
|
| Freight does not need to travel super fast or super high
| tech. What it needs is to be able to travel everywhere at
| high throughput and cheaply. US is doing quite well in that
| regard.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| High throughput comes with a caveat, since it's high
| throughput given the existing poor conditions.
|
| The US used to have much more tracks, but the private
| railroads stripped a lot of them as far as they could get
| away with. There are lines that were four-tracked or were
| electrified that have now been reduced to unelectrified
| single track, so you now have a much more sluggish,
| polluting and congested railroad, and on top of that much
| is poorly maintained to save money.
|
| ---
|
| Also a lot of the freight is bulk freight like coal. This
| has led to some interesting dynamics where freight
| railroads oppose coal plant closures, because they will
| lose a major source of tonnage.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| As a frequent traveler to Tokyo, I became a fan of mass
| transit.
|
| A guaranteed way to become sad, is use the Tokyo trains, then
| come home to New York, and use the Metro/LIRR.
| aj7 wrote:
| Metro/LIRR works fine, if you can tune out the aesthetics.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| And the schedules. Tokyo train schedule slippage is
| measured in seconds.
| decafninja wrote:
| I've found many Newyorkers will respond to any negative
| comparison of the NYC subways to other cities with a
| retort of "but we have 24/7 service and they don't".
|
| I kind of feel that 24/7 service is actually one factor
| in why the NYC subways have so many problems - both in
| terms of logistics and aesthetics.
| decafninja wrote:
| This.
|
| I have fond memories of using the subway/trains in Tokyo.
| Ditto for Seoul (which I'd rank even better than Tokyo's),
| Hong Kong, Singapore.
|
| I dread using the subway in NYC and nowadays try to avoid
| using it as much as possible (mostly via biking).
| [deleted]
| CPLX wrote:
| I think any answer to this has to involve two staples of
| American culture, cars and racism.
|
| The prevalence of both has been a big detriment to rail
| initiatives. For whatever reason people have associated a
| nearby train station with crime and opening up the neighborhood
| to the "wrong people".
|
| And the incredibly cheap and ubiquitous car culture (especially
| in the post-war period) provided the alternative. That of
| course interacts with the dramatic lack of density for new
| post-war suburban neighborhoods as well, which is a function of
| both issues mentioned (cars and racism) as well as the fact
| that the US does indeed (or did) have a whole lot of extra
| space compared to Europe.
| geraldwhen wrote:
| I used to walk past a bus station to lunch most weekdays.
| Nearly every single day I witnessed an assault at the bus
| station. Mass transit hubs do bring crime. Why minimize that?
| solar-ice wrote:
| They just... don't, elsewhere. That's not a normal state of
| affairs. Something is horribly wrong with how you're doing
| something - either with the stations, or with society - if
| that's the case.
| foobiekr wrote:
| At least in my personal experience in Spain, the stations
| in Madrid were, in direct observation, a gathering place
| for pickpockets and other scammers.
| geraldwhen wrote:
| What is elsewhere? Train and subway stations are hubs for
| crime in the places I've been in America.
| solar-ice wrote:
| Germany, the UK, Sweden, NL... India even. Pickpocketing,
| in the big central stations, same as anywhere lots of
| people are, sure - violence, no.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Assaults on mass transit in the US aren't what I'd call a
| normal state of affairs. I haven't seen it yet in person,
| though clearly it happens. Petty theft is a good bit more
| common, though like 99% of the time I just see people
| doing their thing and ignoring everyone else on the
| bus/train/whatever.
|
| I read comments on HN and kind of wonder if this is why
| people believe all these terrible things about the US.
| Never been here, and only have comments online to judge
| by. Explains a lot.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > Mass transit hubs do bring crime
|
| I never realised we had Stalinists over here - thats a line
| of seasoning he would endorse - gather up all the poor and
| the undesirables, send them off to a gulag and the rest of
| us don't have to be bothered by them.
|
| Actually Stalin doesn't fit, it's more of a victorian
| england or feudalist line of thinking
| cbm-vic-20 wrote:
| I live near Boston in the US. In five hours, you can get as far
| north as Portland Maine (there's no passenger rail service
| north of there), and as far south as Philadelphia, and as far
| west as Albany.
|
| In New York, you can probably do better, but if you leave the
| Northeast Corridor (the stretch between Boston and Washington,
| DC, along the coast) destinations to other major cities like
| Montreal will take around nine hours (if they ever restart that
| service post-pandemic), and even the fastest train to Chicago
| takes around 20 hours. NYC to Los Angeles? at least 70 hours.
|
| How far can you get to by train from Paris in 70 hours?
| rr888 wrote:
| > How far can you get to by train from Paris in 70 hours?
|
| NYC->LA is about the same as Paris->Moscow and that takes
| nearly 3 days as well. Paris Instanbul is similar distance
| which is a little quicker but still over 2 days.
| melling wrote:
| I can make it to Portland Maine from NJ in 6 hours.
|
| Portland is only 112 miles from Boston.
| rockostrich wrote:
| As an American, it doesn't really boggle my mind at all. We
| have a very car-centric culture. Just look at how we treat
| cyclists/cycling infrastructure, especially in cities. It's
| night and day compared to most European cities.
|
| To be fair though, the continental US is almost double the size
| of Europe and Amtrak is actually alright in the areas that it
| serves (although my experience with trains in Switzerland/Italy
| was definitely much better).
| simongray wrote:
| > the continental US is almost double the size of Europe
|
| Europe (the continent) is slightly bigger than the entirety
| of the USA...
|
| I guess you are talking about continental Western Europe
| where much of the high speed rail is?
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > Europe (the continent) is slightly bigger than the
| entirety of the USA...
|
| And a good bit more than double the number of people.
| PopAlongKid wrote:
| > a pretty hostile terrain - Italy has lots of mountains,
| hills, rivers
|
| So does U.S., a lot more in fact. The length of Italy north to
| south is 1,320km, the distance from San Francisco to Chicago is
| 3,220Km and that's only 2/3rds of the east-west distance of the
| continental U.S. And there are two major mountain ranges to
| cross on that trip, and huge stretches with almost no
| population. (How many deserts to cross does Italy have?)
|
| Trains need crews, the crews need to work in shifts, the crews
| need to be available along the way, even in Nowhere, Nevada.
| That causes delays and restricts schedules.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| how are deserts a relevant problem?
| robohoe wrote:
| Getting to desert areas to maintain the rails takes time
| and resources. We're talking about large swaths of deserts
| and desolate land with absolutely no cities or towns for
| double-triple digits of miles.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| Trains in the US are widely prevalent! It's just that they're
| used for freight rather than passenger travel. The main driver
| behind this is the population density of the USA, cities are
| spaced too far apart to make passenger travel by train viable.
| Not coincidentally, the only area that does have significant
| passenger rail networks, the DC - Boston corridor, has
| population density similar to Western Europe.
|
| An interesting video on this topic:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbEfzuCLoAQ
| dfee wrote:
| Italy is much smaller than the US. It's about the equivalent
| size of New Mexico - which has 1/30th the population (2M).
|
| Public transit isn't bad - I told on an Amtrak from LA to SD
| yesterday which was quite nice.
|
| But, I also rode on the LA metro which was filed with mobs of
| mentally ill marauders.
|
| My experience to Rome (albeit a bit over a decade ago) was
| similar. That's an off putting response that likely plays a big
| role in sinking demand for public transit - esp. as compared to
| a car.
|
| Of course, America was also designed for the auto - we're
| newer, and gas was cheap during the highway construction
| heyday.
| davidw wrote:
| There are plenty of higher density areas within the US
| though, where trains would be a good option. Maybe Cyanide
| Springs, Oklahoma to Blandsville, North Dakota doesn't make
| sense for trains, but you could do bits of the PNW,
| California and the east coast with higher quality rail pretty
| successfully.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| The fact the US is basically empty means the cost to build a
| HSR route to go between population centers is super high
| because of the sheer distances involved. You're talking like
| 1000 miles, not 200. The places which are closer together, like
| the East Coast, do have some passenger rail but they're also
| much denser, like Europe, and so they have the same kind of
| constraints (or worse).
|
| The US has a lot of freight rail, and we use it.
|
| The Wild West mentality has gone away in the railroad industry
| which is now hyper-conservative and regulated.
|
| I do sometimes wish the US lived up to the Wild West stereotype
| the Europeans imagine. But no, we often have just as much
| stifling regulation (if not more), depending on where you're
| talking about. But we do have gun violence, so there's that.
| darksaints wrote:
| The Midwest cluster of cities which include Chicago,
| Cleveland, Indianapolis, Minneapolis, St Louis, Columbus, and
| Detroit, have an extremely similar density and distance
| distribution compared to France, where high speed rail is
| incredibly successful. We could have successful high speed
| rail nearly everywhere in the US with a possible exception of
| the rocky mountain regions. I wish this density trope would
| die.
|
| The real reason we don't have high speed rail is that right
| of way acquisition is ridiculously costly unless government
| is involved, and we don't trust our government to do it
| right. Probably justified, if urban rail costs are
| indicative.
| scythe wrote:
| > the cost to build a HSR route to go between population
| centers is super high
|
| The cost is high, but more painfully, the cost per-mile is
| _higher_ than for the same distance of railroad in Europe or
| East Asia. That 's not a result of pure geography.
|
| Also, while the cost is high, it's not actually that large in
| comparison to the overall DoT budget, which is projected at
| $142B for FY2023. You could build a lot of train for that.
| Political will is a much more important factor. We just
| dropped $40B on the Current War without blinking.
|
| Even so, this misses another key step: intercity rail in
| Europe usually connects seamlessly to metro rail, which is
| what makes it so easy and nice to use. But the cities
| themselves in the United States do not usually have rail
| systems to connect to. That's why the best near-term rail
| corridor IMHO is NY-Buffalo (subway) - Youngstown (possible
| Pittsburgh metro extension) - Cleveland (subway) - Toledo
| (possible Detroit metro extension) - Chicago, connecting to
| _six_ subway systems.
| Kon-Peki wrote:
| Toledo directly to Chicago doesn't make a lot of sense.
| Most of the track would go through Indiana, which is _at
| best_ indifferent to Amtrak.
|
| Consider instead putting Detroit in between the two. The
| Chicago-Detroit route _already_ operates at 110 mph, Amtrak
| and the Michigan Dept of Transportation _already_ own the
| majority of the track and give routing priority to
| passenger trains. Amtrak and VIA are _already_ talking
| about a Chicago-Toronto train that doesn 't require
| passengers to disembark for immigration/customs, and their
| systems are _already_ connected via a rail tunnel under the
| Detroit River.
| scythe wrote:
| Oh, yeah, that sounds pretty good. My main point is that
| you want to connect the long train to short trains.
|
| In theory, if Raleigh and Richmond (both very "blue"
| cities and maybe open to it) built LRT systems, you could
| get another route in DC-Richmond-Raleigh-Charlotte-
| Atlanta, where the other three have existing intracity
| rail.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > the cost per-mile is higher than for the same distance of
| railroad in Europe
|
| how does this make any sence, we have to deal with
| tonneling under or demolishing existing densely populated
| real estate along the route, literal mountains in the way,
| etc.
|
| HS2 in UK caused an outrage, someone's farm was cut in
| half, houses had to be demolished, etc
| OJFord wrote:
| I don't know why this is down-voted so, but to me also
| outside the US it seems correct? You bill for travel between
| stations, there'd be _a lot_ more track & travel between
| stations in the US, on average, if it were as ubiquitous.
|
| Intranational _flight_ is a lot more common there. I imagine
| the economics of it are better, lower ticket price, and in
| many cases probably quicker too, even including airport BS.
| hannasanarion wrote:
| Nobody's asking for an express train between Jackson and
| Billings. When you exclude the Mountain States and Alaska,
| the US has about the same population density as Western
| Europe.
|
| There's no good reason for us to have zero public transit
| options between Atlanta and Savannah, Madison and
| Milwaukee, Columbus and Cincinatti, Denver and Colorado
| Springs, or Mobile and New Orleans.
| mypalmike wrote:
| One reason is that, once you arrive, options for public
| transport within the destination city in the US are
| limited. So you need a car once you get to your
| destination anyhow. What do you do when you step off the
| train in Atlanta or Savannah?
|
| I just spent 7 weeks traveling around Europe by train. I
| would not have considered that approach without the
| extensive local public transportation systems. Atlanta is
| not remotely in the same league as Berlin in terms of
| public transit.
| runarberg wrote:
| I've never been to the state of Georgia, but I was under
| the impression that both Atlanta and Savannah had pretty
| good public transit systems. Atlanta has a metro system
| (MARTA) which is the eight largest in the USA by
| ridership. And Savannah has an extensive bus network, and
| a walkable downtown area where transit is actually free
| to ride.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| >There's no good reason for us to have zero public
| transit options between Atlanta and Savannah, Madison and
| Milwaukee, Columbus and Cincinatti, Denver and Colorado
| Springs, or Mobile and New Orleans.
|
| Does regular bus service not count? Sure they're not
| publicly owned but does that result in any meaningful
| differences to the users?
| madcaptenor wrote:
| Quick sanity check here, because I've seen this claim and
| never bothered to check.
|
| Let's say Western Europe = Germany, Austria, Italy, and
| everything west of them, i. e. Benelux, France,
| Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, Great Britain (= UK -
| Northern Ireland). (I'm including the UK and excluding
| Ireland because there are rail connecctions from Britain
| to the mainland but not from Ireland to Britain. I'm
| excluding Denmark because isn't that really Scandinavia?)
|
| Total population: Germany = 84m, France = 68m, Britain =
| 66m, Italy = 59m, Spain = 47m, Netherlands = 18m, Belgium
| = 12m, Portugal = 10m, Austria = 9m, Switzerland = 9m,
| Luxembourg = 1m. Total is 383m.
|
| Total area, in km^2: Germany = 358k, France = 551k,
| Britain = 228k, Italy = 301k, Spain = 499k, Netherlands =
| 41k, Belgium = 31k, Portugal = 88k, Austria = 84k,
| Switzerland = 41k, Luxembourg = 3k. Total is 2225k.
|
| So the population density of western Europe is about
| 172/km^2 or 445/mi^2.
|
| The only states this dense are DC, New Jersey, Rhode
| Island, Connecticut, Maryland, Delaware; New York and
| Florida are just under the cutoff.
|
| If I've done the math right, DC + NJ + RI + MA + CT + MD
| + DE + NY + PA + OH (74m people/429k km^2) is the largest
| contiguous bunch of states which is over 172 people/km^2.
|
| If we take the east to be everything east of the
| Mississippi, I get 190m people in 2.301m km^2, or 82
| people/km^2. If we add in CA + OR + WA that actually
| drags down the density a bit.
|
| So the densely populated bits of the Northeast/mid-
| Atlantic are as densely populated as Western Europe. But
| the eastern US as a whole isn't.
|
| I agree that those pairs of cities you mentioned should
| have better connections between them though.
| giantrobot wrote:
| Most of the US is nowhere close to as densely populated
| as Western Europe, even excluding Alaska and the mountain
| states. You can't just look at the land area and
| population and make a naive calculation of density.
|
| Western Europe's population density _gradient_ is much
| sharper than most of the US. Only the coastal corridor of
| the Northeast US really comes close. The gradient of the
| populations is important because it tells you how many
| people are within a usable range of the train stations.
|
| Even if you've got a high speed line between Madison and
| Milwaukee what in the hell are you going to do once you
| step off the train? Neither city has impressive public
| transit and both are very spread out. A high speed link
| might save a boring drive between those cities but that
| savings would get eaten up by the intra-city travel.
| ejb999 wrote:
| >>Intranational flight is a lot more common there. I
| imagine the economics of it are better, lower ticket price,
| and in many cases probably quicker too, even including
| airport BS.
|
| That _is_ the problem in my opinion - I prefer sitting on a
| train, to sitting on a plane, but for most routes I need to
| travel (within the US) it takes longer to get there and is
| more expensive than flying - why would anyone want to pay
| more and waste more time? You either need to be faster or
| cheaper if you want my business.
| secretsatan wrote:
| The more rail improves the more I'm tempted to take it,
| with flying you have the additional time cost of just
| dealing with the airports, turn up an hour early, then
| get put in the metal tube where they won't serve you
| drink till they're up in the air, and you can't bring
| your own.
|
| A train may take longer sometimes, but I find the whole
| thing much less stressful, you're not strapped to the
| seat, you have leg room, even a table, power sockets,
| bring your own food and drink, and the prices are
| competitive.
|
| It still takes longer than I'd like to get from
| Switzerland to the UK, and that's mostly due to a lengthy
| change in Paris.
|
| I think in France, and prob other countries too, their
| moving to ban domestic flights that can be done on rail
| instead
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| It's hard to overstate how different the European rail
| experience is from the American experience. SF<->LA is a
| 50m, $50 flight. It's approx. 9h and $400 by rail. In
| practice, the last time I attempted that route it took
| 15h because the train had issues halfway and none of the
| assigned seats had power or legroom.
| brewdad wrote:
| Even the Seattle to Portland route, probably the best on
| the west coast, has issues. A flight takes about 50 mins
| and can be had for about $60. Alaska Airlines runs
| flights at least once an hour all day long. From 6am
| until midnight.
|
| The train takes 3.5 hours (often closer to 4 and I've had
| it take more than 5 just because of freight priority).
| The train makes 4 trips a day (one being a longer route
| that is usually delayed) and the timing means that any
| business trip will probably require an overnight stay.
| The train is only $27 though because both states
| (especially WA) heavily subsidize the route.
|
| In the end, it really comes down to where in the metro
| areas your trip begins and ends as to which works out
| best. For us, the train station saves about an hour of
| ground transport time compared to the airports and we can
| arrive much closer to departure, so the train works best.
| For plenty of others, the airport will be faster and
| probably easier logistically.
| mikotodomo wrote:
| wow wtf, american trains are so bad. the government
| should force those companies to fix it
| OJFord wrote:
| Yeah, well, that's what I'm saying really.
|
| It's going to be slower and more expensive so not so many
| people are going to want to do it so why build more of
| it.
|
| If the major stops are closer together, 'a journey' is
| shorter and cheaper and beats air travel, and many more
| people will pay for it.
| chrisfinazzo wrote:
| I don't really have a preference, but having done my
| first couple flights in close to 20 years in the past 3
| months, I was struck by how much has changed in that
| time.
|
| PreCheck and Global Entry weren't around when we went to
| Bermuda in August 2001. It was a trip notable not only
| for its proximity to 9/11 - by chance, my bag was
| searched either before we left L.F Wade in St. George's
| or on arrival back in Newark, but this happened without
| my knowledge and I only found out about it because
| customs had repacked it included a note informing me of
| this fact inside. - and also because a trip to camp the
| previous week was the start of an ear infection which
| burst my ear drum on the plane going down.
|
| _Fun times_.
|
| However, I quite like the idea of passport control on a
| train happening before you embark on the departing leg of
| a trip. With those formalities out of the way, just
| collect your bags at the destination and you're free to
| go.
|
| I don't know if the FAA or TSA would consider this too
| burdensome to implement, but it's an idea.
| anonymous_sorry wrote:
| > However, I quite like the idea of passport control on a
| train happening before you embark on the departing leg of
| a trip. With those formalities out of the way, just
| collect your bags at the destination and you're free to
| go.
|
| It's better than that. Space on board is at less of a
| premium so train carriages can be made with plenty of
| room for luggage alongside passengers. No need to check
| baggage.
| jrockway wrote:
| They've been trying to implement passport control before
| boarding the train between NYC and Montreal for a while,
| but nothing seems to have come of it. It was an Obama-era
| priority.
|
| I haven't taken that train in many years, but they
| basically stop the train at the border and immigration
| agents board and check everyone's passport. It's
| scheduled to take 2 hours. Really stupid. It's a 45
| minute flight, and you go through US immigration in
| Canada before boarding the flight.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Vancouver's station does that: preclearance and then sit
| in a sequestered cage to get on the train.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Central_Station
|
| There are some disadvantages, such as not being able to
| pickup anymore passengers until crossing the border.
| Probably a non-issue with Vancouver close to the border.
| OJFord wrote:
| What about that piece of the US that's isolated from the
| rest, quite close to Vancouver I think, Fort something
| attached to the South of BC, accessible only through it.
| Do you have to go through something like that twice, or
| can you go between it and the main body of the US more
| easily (without stops perhaps)?
|
| Or (facepalm, more obviously) Alaska for that matter?
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Point Roberts is probably what you're thinking of.
|
| Popular with Canadians to send parcels to and pickup gas.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point_Roberts,_Washington
|
| A school bus runs from there to mainland USA and I
| suspect there's an informal agreement to drive without
| stopping through Canada so they don't have to bother too
| excessively with clearances.
| hyakosm wrote:
| The Adirondack train is suspended since 2020 and had a
| commercial speed of 56 km/h (35 mph).
| OJFord wrote:
| That's crazy. Perhaps a good comparison is the channel
| tunnel, e.g. going from London to Paris you go through
| security similar (a bit less onerous) to that at an
| airport before boarding.
|
| That was the case even with the UK in the EU (maybe it's
| not any less onerous than an airport now actually, idk)
| but otherwise intra-EU over land is not an issue, almost
| necessarily. (But then, you might think that about
| Canada/US.)
| hyakosm wrote:
| On some routes between France and Switzerland police and
| customs inspection seems to take place on board. It's
| even better, no time wasted.
|
| https://www.tgv-lyria.com/ch/en/travelling/on-board-
| support/...
| woodruffw wrote:
| I agree that we should let density and demand drive
| construction of HSR.
|
| That being said, there are plenty of plausible HSR routes in
| the US. We're a very sparsely populated country in our
| middle, but there's effectively a "string" of large cities
| right through our middle: NYC - Pittsburgh - Columbus -
| {Cincinnati, Indianapolis} - {Louisville, St. Louis} - Kansas
| City - Oklahoma City - Albuquerque - {Phoenix, Tucson} - Los
| Angeles.
|
| All of the legs there should under 400 miles, and most should
| be under 200. There's also plenty of room for adjustment:
| Louisville - Nashville - Memphis - Dallas and then onward
| south, for example.
| aj7 wrote:
| I see no mention of 737's and A320's here or in most posts.
| Compare the price per mile with those of alternatives. The
| U.S. doesn't even resemble Europe.
| melling wrote:
| Yes, we agree we should only build where it makes sense.
|
| 1000 miles is quite far. That would be 5-6 hours!
|
| - NYC - Miami 1300 miles
|
| - NYC - Chicago 800 miles
|
| Then we have these:
|
| - NYC - Philly 92 miles
|
| - NYC - DC 225 miles
|
| - NYC - Boston 215 miles
|
| - NYC - Portland, ME 325 miles
|
| - NYC - Pittsburgh 380 miles
|
| - NYC - Cleveland 470 miles
|
| - Cleveland - Chicago 350 miles
|
| - St. Louis - Chicago 320 miles
|
| - Houston - Dallas 240 miles
|
| - Houston - Austin 170 miles
|
| - Dallas - Austin 200 miles
|
| - Seattle - Portland 175 miles
|
| - Las Vegas - Los Angeles 280 miles
|
| California too.
| dahart wrote:
| Sadly our 1000 mile trips currently take ~24 hours rather
| than the 5-6 that it could. Multiple factors for that: slow
| trains; long stops; cargo rail gets priority over passenger
| rail.
| chrisfinazzo wrote:
| Yep.
|
| Even the fastest trains Amtrak offers ("Acela") are zoned
| - or permitted, not sure what the right term is here - up
| to 150 MPH, and only on specific portions of the route.
|
| Makes no sense at all.
| redtexture wrote:
| The sense is that the Northeast corridor has too many
| curves and roadbed issues to be able to go faster.
|
| There would have to be constructed a new corridor, not in
| the same path as existing railroad rights of way, for not
| a small amount of money, and going through expensive real
| estate.
|
| The political will for that is not in existence, so far.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| Easy to complain on the internet. Hard to change a hard
| left into a sweeping arc in the middle of New Haven.
|
| Even ignoring the money, if you try and do a project like
| that you are going to get slapped in the face by all the
| same "cutting apart muh neighborhood" rhetoric that gets
| used against highways. Grade separation and "just paying
| those people to go away" are both expensive enough to be
| non-starters.
| tomjakubowski wrote:
| Highways and rail create different kinds of disruption in
| neighborhoods. Highways constantly have traffic, creating
| noise and pollution all the time. Railroads are mostly
| quiet, with loud traffic in short bursts.
|
| Passenger railroads are narrower than urban highways. The
| US-101 freeway cuts through Echo Park and Westlake in Los
| Angeles, taking up as much as 330 feet of width, counting
| on/off ramps. California HSR has trench sections specced
| as narrow as 72 feet[1], and most of its urban rights-of-
| way are under 100 feet wide.
|
| Walking next to the 101 in Echo Park you can see how it
| so starkly divides what was once a single connected
| neighborhood. The light rail lines (about ~40-50 ft to
| cross) in other neighborhoods don't give that impression.
|
| [1]: https://www.hsr.ca.gov/wp-
| content/uploads/docs/programs/eir_...
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| I have no love for highway pits but to play if off like
| an HSR pit is some quaint little light rail is simply
| farcical.
|
| You're being dishonest or ignorant. The fact that you
| compare max-width of one to min-width of the other rules
| out one option. A pit is a pit. You're limited to
| crossing at a few specific points no matter how narrow it
| is and traveling to those points accounts for the bulk of
| the distance covered. The physical width only matters if
| you're evaluating the neighborhood for visual appeal and
| not actual livability. "Quiet most of the time" doesn't
| really count for much because people acclimate to the
| background noise levels and that one train per hour is
| just as jarring as that one motorcycle with the insane
| exhaust per hour. At least with subways and airports it's
| every couple minutes so you get more used to it.
| redtexture wrote:
| High speed rail is like having a jet plane go by, given
| the intent to run at, say 150 to 200 miles per hour, and
| has its own troublesome neighbor issues.
|
| All corridors are troublesome.
| ghaff wrote:
| And the fact is that while taking a train the full length
| of the Northeast Corridor takes too long to be practical
| most of the time, NYC to points north and NYC to points
| south works pretty well (i.e. is competitive with flying)
| with existing trains.
| aj7 wrote:
| I regularly travel Tucson <-> Ft. Lauderdale. 2100 miles.
| Including ground transport, door to door is 10-12 hours.
| jfengel wrote:
| That's interesting. You must have some much better train
| routes out in the big empty spaces in between. What line
| is that?
|
| For me, in DC, the trip is half the distance (1,000
| miles) and would take twice as long (25 hours, according
| to Google).
| orangepurple wrote:
| 10-12 hours door to door if flying.
|
| It is 32 hours if driving 130-150 kph on the freeway
| (80-90 mph) without stopping for food, bathrooms, gas, or
| sleep. It's probably a few hundred hours with the train
| since you will have to go a few hundred or a few thousand
| kilometers north first.
|
| Interestingly, there is a long train line from Louisiana
| to Los Angeles called the Sunset Limited. Up until
| Hurricane Katrina in 2005 it ran between Orlando Florida
| and Los Angeles,
| [deleted]
| dahart wrote:
| Wow, crazy! On Amtrak?
| cbm-vic-20 wrote:
| On Amtrak, that's a 102 hour trip that takes you through
| Chicago and DC. Not an exaggeration. Given usual delays,
| that 102h is wildly optimistic. Coach seats: $387.
| tcmart14 wrote:
| Maybe I am misunderstanding some of the intent. But yes, a
| rail from NYC to Miami is far, but when you chunk it up, it
| makes sense. For a NYC-Miami, you could have stops in
| Philadelphia, DC/Baltimore, Richmond, Raleigh/Durham,
| Charleston, Savannah, Jacksonville, Orlando. It would
| really depend on the route. Like a NYC-Portland OR or
| Seattle, you can make some pretty good stops from NYC to
| Chicago, but once you get past Chicago, there probably is
| any really good population centers for stops there between
| Chicago and Portland/Seattle. So in some areas, those
| distances can be justified, but for sure we have some that
| can't be easily justified.
| madcaptenor wrote:
| The thing about NYC-Miami is that north of DC the
| population is along the coast but south of it the
| population is inland. A route via Charlotte and Atlanta
| probably pencils out better than one via Charleston and
| Savannah.
| tcmart14 wrote:
| Yea it does. If your gonna make a stop in North
| Carolina/South Carolina, Charlotte would be a good spot
| because it would have some good access to then change
| transportation and go to Charleston or Raleigh or
| Greensboro. Didn't consider Atlanta though since that
| would be a lease direct route to Miami. You have to go
| back East to hit something like Jacksonville or Orlando.
| But the trade off is, Atlanta is probably a more wanted
| destination than Savannah. Or pehaps something like
| Augusta where you don't have to go as far West, but your
| still not too terribly far from Atlanta.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| The entire Great Lakes region is decently densely
| populated.
|
| - Columbus - Cleveland 142 miles
|
| - Columbus - Cincinnati 106 miles
|
| - Cleveland - Pittsburgh 134 miles
|
| - Cleveland - Toledo 114 miles
|
| - Columbus - Toledo 142 miles
|
| - Toledo - Detroit 58 miles (Cleveland, Columbus, &
| Cincinnati can share this)
|
| - Toledo - Chicago 244 miles (Cleveland, Columbus,
| Cincinnati, & Detroit can share this)
|
| Theoretically, you can connect Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland,
| Columbus, Cincinnati, & Pittsburgh into <3 hr trips by HSR.
|
| That's going to beat flying. And that connects about:
|
| - Chicago 9.5M
|
| - Detroit 4.5M
|
| - Pittsburgh 2.3M
|
| - Cincinatti 2.3M
|
| - Columbus 2.2M
|
| - Cleveland 2.1M
|
| - TOTAL = 23M+ people (~7% of the US)
|
| For 940 miles of rail...
|
| Even considering that HSR costs ~$100M per mile - that's
| about $4k per person.
|
| That sounds like a lot. But since we have frequent
| opportunities to finance 30-year treasuries at ~1.5%
| interest and the Fed mandates inflation to be ~2% or
| higher:
|
| =PMT(-0.005/12, 30*12, -4000)
|
| That's about ~$10.30 per month per person. Considering the
| average tax payer is paying ~$1,300 per month in federal
| taxes - 0.7% of that going to HSR where it makes sense -
| does not seem like a terrible idea...
|
| For context, highways cost about ~$200B per year - which
| comes down to ~$49.75 per tax payer per month - however,
| only about 1/4th of that is Federal taxes (~$12.43).
|
| I'll also add that the Great Lakes is probably at the
| bottom of the list of regions where HSR would make sense.
| Other places like the Northeast make much more sense.
| FuriouslyAdrift wrote:
| Indianapolis connects all these cities already (and with
| rail to some of them)... 2.8M
| eloisant wrote:
| We're not talking about doing NYC - SF by train, but there
| are a lot of places where it makes sense.
|
| As I used to live in the Bay Area, it really surprised me
| that there was no bullet train between San Francisco and Los
| Angeles. Yes, apparently it's planned but it boggles my mind
| that they waited so much before building it.
|
| Americans don't realize how much nicer train is compared to
| plane for medium distances (up to 500 miles). Station being
| in the middle of the city, get in the train 10 minutes before
| departure without check-in or security, no waiting 15 minutes
| on the tarmac before disembarking... I guarantee you the
| door-to-door time is going to be lower.
|
| Also train is more confortable, seats are wider, you can use
| phones/electronics for the full duration of the trip...
| Bubble_Pop_22 wrote:
| > without check-in or security
|
| The biggest break for trains in the last 20 years hasn't
| been Maglevs or Japan's bullet. Matter of fact it has been
| OBL fixation on attacking America in a spectacular and
| televised fashion.
|
| The lack of security abord trains is shocking honestly.
| Trains are special, there is something about them which
| calms people even the most evil, because ill intentioned
| people like terrorists and mentally deranged domestic
| shooters just ignore them.
| labcomputer wrote:
| > Yes, apparently it's planned but it boggles my mind that
| they waited so much before building it.
|
| Basically because there are only 2-3 places you can
| practically cross the mountains surrounding LA (Tehachapi
| Tejon, and the coast), and 3-4 places you can do the same
| for the SFBA. All of them are already occupied by existing
| rail or roads.
|
| Those mountain crossings cost more that the rest of the
| system combined.
|
| > get in the train 10 minutes before departure without
| check-in or security, no waiting 15 minutes on the tarmac
| before disembarking... I guarantee you the door-to-door
| time is going to be lower.
|
| I wish, but you're wrong and it's not even close. (SFO, OAK
| or SJC) to (LAX, BUR, LGB or ONT) is about 45 minutes gate
| to gate. Add 5 minutes for security[ _], 25 minutes
| boarding, 15 minutes deplaning and you 're at 1h30 curb to
| curb (vs. the almost 3 hours station to station that CAHSR
| _claims* they will provide when finished).
|
| The plane is faster even accounting for travel time to and
| from the station or airport. The contrast is especially
| stark if your destination is not downtown LA.
|
| [*] TSA with PreCheck has gotten really fast in the past
| couple years. They no longer scan your boarding pass (just
| your ID + a database of the day's travelers). You don't
| need to unpack your bag, remove your shoes, nor remove your
| jacket. On a dozen trips in the past year, security has
| never taken me more than 5 minutes. It takes almost as long
| to walk through the maze of ropes forming the queue as the
| actual security procedure itself.
| not2b wrote:
| You'd only want to build regional HSR systems that would
| connect cities that get a lot of traffic and flights between
| them and are under 300 miles / 500 km apart. So, the
| northeast corridor, connect California major cities, connect
| Portland to Seattle, connect Dallas/Austin/Houston/San
| Antonio.
|
| In Canada, half the population lives near a nearly straight
| line from Quebec City to Windsor; you could put a high speed
| rail line down the middle of that.
| wbsss4412 wrote:
| The center of population in the US is still just barely to
| the west of the Mississippi, whenever people point out how
| vast and largely empty the US is, the leave out that the
| population itself is actually generally fairly close together
| for a majority of the country.
|
| You could easily have HSR all over the south, Midwest and NE,
| and then between population centers on the west coast, just
| likely not in the desert and western Great Plains.
| madcaptenor wrote:
| See for example Alon Levy's map of proposed HSR for the
| Eastern United States:
| https://pedestrianobservations.com/2019/02/10/high-speed-
| rai... They've actually done serious investigation of
| what's viable given typical costs and ridership of high-
| speed lines elsewhere in the world.
|
| The high-speed bits they propose are basically a Boston-
| Atlanta-Chicago triangle with some ornaments (Chicago - KC,
| Chicago - Minneapolis, Cleveland - Pittsburgh -
| Philadelphia, and connections to Toronto, Montreal,
| Quebec), and separate networks in Florida and Texas.
| Connecting the Florida and Texas networks to the main one
| is marginal.
|
| I'm not sure of their opinions on separate networks in the
| Pacific Northwest and in California, but I'm sure they have
| looked at it. I do recall them saying that it doesn't make
| sense to connect, say, Portland to San Francisco - there's
| just not much in between.
| wbsss4412 wrote:
| It doesn't make sense to connect Portland and SF, but
| there's a lot of value to be gained in connecting
| Portland and Vancouver BC, and San Diego to SF/possibly
| Sacramento.
|
| We would definitely want to have a "constellation" of
| networks rather than one interconnected system given the
| geography of the US, and that's fine. There's never going
| to be a time when it makes more sense to travel from LA
| to NYC by rail instead of flying.
|
| The biggest takeaway is that there is a specific role
| that HSR can play, but it's not going to take over all
| long distance trips. Given where we are starting in the
| US, however, there is a massive mine of untapped
| potential.
| madcaptenor wrote:
| Right. You don't want a line down the entire West Coast,
| even though it's tempting to draw. But a line from
| Vancouver to Portland makes sense, as does a "greater
| California" system - roughly lines from Los Angeles to
| SF, Sacramento, Vegas, San Diego. The latter is basically
| the California HSR system that's under construction, plus
| the proposed privately built line from LA to Vegas. (Levy
| also proposes LA to Phoenix; Phoenix is further than
| Vegas but also bigger, so maybe it makes sense.)
|
| Even in the east there are some gaps. It's obvious that a
| midwestern network centered on Chicago and a southeastern
| network centered on Atlanta make sense, but it's a bit
| more of a stretch to connect those to the northeast.
| Gwypaas wrote:
| Why not? The great advantage of high speed rail is that
| with intermediate stops along the route you can service
| smaller cities which previously, or as you just did,
| would be considered flyover country. Thus making the
| value of the system greater than just the end terminuses.
|
| Just looking at the towns between Portland and Sacramento
| Salem, Eugene and Medford exist. Neither would themselves
| ever be valuable enough for HSR, but as part of a larger
| system they definitely would bring value.
|
| Especially since you would get 3.5 hour trains Bay Area
| <-> Seattle and 4.5 hour trains to Vancouver.
|
| That is right at the limit of when flying starts to make
| more sense from a time perspective.
|
| Edit: Here's a good video on the concept. From a comment
| (by the author) he says that France and Spain has many
| lines in the range of 4 given his scoring. It just seems
| miniscule compared to the enormous potential of DC <->
| Boston corridor.
|
| "U.S. High Speed Rail: What's Next? Analyzing Extensions
| and Expansions, and What Makes Sense"
|
| https://youtu.be/zxiGY8p2rCo
| labcomputer wrote:
| The problem is that TSA isn't as bad as it was right
| after 9/11, and baggage tracking is much better on all
| airlines. You no longer need to arrive 2 hours before the
| scheduled departure and spend an hour collecting your
| bags.
|
| With TSA PreCheck, I can reliably go from curb to gate in
| less than 15 minutes. If you're not someone who feels the
| need to be the first one on the plane, that means you can
| arrive at the airport 30 minutes before the scheduled
| departure time.
|
| So, as a practical matter, that means a SJC->SEA flight
| is at least an hour shorter than the hypothetical train.
|
| I'm also very skeptical that a train could reach Seattle
| in 3.5 hours from the Bay Area. That would require an
| _average_ speed of over 200 mph on the great-circle path.
|
| California High-Speed Rail only promises an average speed
| of 150 mph between LA and San Francisco (w/ a world-class
| top speed of 220 mph). Additionally, geography dictates a
| more circuitous route. CAHSR route-miles between LA and
| the SFBA (similar terrain) are 25% greater than the
| straight-line distance.
|
| Realistically, the train would take almost 6 hours, and a
| plane would be less than half.
| ghaff wrote:
| Yeah, I haven't flown for a while and I gather there's
| still a certain level of travel chaos. But pre-pandemic,
| I'd get to the airport early because it's more relaxing
| for me and my limo company doesn't like to cut things
| close. But with TSA Pre, I was rarely more than 15
| minutes through security and often much faster. Backups
| happen and I'd rather build in slack for them. But in my
| experience, at the US airports I fly through, the
| "security theater" is rarely onerous.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| There really isn't much between Portland area and San
| Francisco area, and there isn't enough potential economic
| activity that an HSR would induce (it is too mountainous,
| which also means building HSR would be more expensive).
| embedded_hiker wrote:
| South of Eugene and north of Redding, the land is
| mountainous and would be extremely difficult to build a
| straight enough line to serve as HSR. The existing Amtrak
| Cascades service goes between Eugene and Vancouver BC.
| runarberg wrote:
| I agree, a high speed line between Eugene and Redding
| seems like an overkill. However a traditional electrified
| railway with a stop in Medford would be pretty sweat.
|
| With the planned California High Speed rail going between
| Sacramento and Los Angeles, and the proposed Cascadia
| high speed rail going all the way to Eugene, this
| traditional link would enable a sleeper train between
| Seattle and Los Angeles in something like 10-13 hours.
| That is way better then today's Coastal Starlight which
| makes the trip in 36 hours.
| wbsss4412 wrote:
| > Especially since you would get 3.5 hour trains Bay Area
| <-> Seattle and 4.5 hour trains to Vancouver.
|
| Hiroshima to Tokyo is just over 3.5 hours on the
| Shinkansen, and it's a 500 mile trip. SF TO Seattle is
| roughly 800 miles... You're making a very optimistic
| projection.
|
| > Just looking at the towns between Portland and
| Sacramento Salem, Eugene and Medford exist.
|
| You're barely cracking 500k people and covering the most
| difficult terrain on the entire corridor.
| madcaptenor wrote:
| I'm sure they bring some value but my understanding is
| they don't bring _enough_ value. But I could be wrong!
| Gwypaas wrote:
| Here's a good video on one method of calculating what the
| sum of the smaller individual parts would be. This is for
| the north east corridor but the same thinking applies to
| any rail project.
|
| It seems like about a million people live there, not
| nearly enough individually, and trains would likely
| alternate at which locations they stop to bring the total
| travel time between the larger areas down.
|
| Might be hindered by the mountainous terrain though
| making the cost prohibitive.
|
| "U.S. High Speed Rail: What's Next? Analyzing Extensions
| and Expansions, and What Makes Sense"
|
| https://youtu.be/zxiGY8p2rCo
| madcaptenor wrote:
| Thanks for the link! Will watch later.
| bluGill wrote:
| Because not enough people live along the way. Sure you an
| build track and run trains, but 5 hours on a train is
| about the time where flying is enough faster that people
| will fly instead of taking the train. Less than 5 hours
| train competes well (stations are closer to you, and no
| long security lines), but after that airplanes are enough
| faster that few people would use a train. That means only
| a small number of people will ride the train for those
| middle stations.
|
| Sure if you are building a track you can put in stations
| in towns that don't generation much traffic, but you
| still need traffic from somewhere and it won't come.
| SllX wrote:
| Well with Maglev, Portland to San Francisco could make
| sense via Sacramento. You wouldn't want to do it on the
| coast because of the mountains, and there's at least
| Redding and Ashland and a couple of other places in-
| between.
|
| At 500 km/h (310 mph) you could feasibly do Sacramento to
| Portland in under two hours. The less straightforward
| question is how much of the metro area do you serve
| around those two cities, and do you connect that line
| directly to San Francisco or do you run a separate line
| to Sacramento via the Delta? Do you go a sort if L-shape
| around Stockton first? The politics of this could push
| travel time up, but at 500 km/h you can cover a lot of
| ground, much of it fairly empty.
|
| So a hypothetical Best Coast system would connect
| Vancouver, BC to Portland, Portland to Sacramento,
| Sacramento to Reno, Reno to Las Vegas, Sacramento to LA,
| San Francisco to Sacramento via Stockton, San Francisco
| to LA, LA to Tijuana via San Diego, LA to Las Vegas, LA
| to El Paso via Phoenix, Phoenix to St. George, Las Vegas
| to Salt Lake City via St. George, San Diego to El Paso
| via Tucson & Mexicali and now you're in Texas where
| options include El Paso to New Orleans via either Austin
| & Houston or San Antonio & Houston, Brownsville to
| McAllen, Brownsville to Houston via Corpus Christi,
| Corpus Christi to San Antonio, Houston to Dallas, Dallas
| to Oklahoma City and I'm probably missing some, but you
| have the workings of a Gulf Coast constellation anchored
| by Texas on one end and Florida on the other.
|
| Thing is, I've worked this all out on paper too,
| including a Northeast, Southeast and Midwest map that
| looked much like one that someone linked to up the
| thread. Problem is, our choice of infrastructure is
| downstream from our cultural preferences which in turn
| are shaped by the infrastructure our ancestors built in
| the decades prior.
|
| El Paso is about 725 miles away from San Diego according
| to Siri, so with the best trains in the world you could
| be inside the Texas rail constellation I briefly outlined
| above in about 2-3 hours which in turn could serve as the
| basis for a Gulf Coast constellation connecting Florida
| and the Southeast connecting to the Midwest and the
| Northeast and then to Canada.
|
| It's not built though because people just fly instead. We
| worked out how to get cheap air travel long before we
| figured out super-fast transcontinental rail travel that
| probably doesn't make sense coast to coast but if it
| already existed, probably would make sense going coast to
| middle and middle to middle and would just happen to
| connect the coasts. Or you could just fly, which is what
| we do, and since that already exists and is even faster
| than rail travel, metro areas can figure out how their
| own inter-urban rail systems that are slow and local
| where it makes sense to build them and just try to make
| sure the airport is connected too. I like trains, but not
| so much that I'm willing to toss hundreds of billions of
| public money into some kind of "national rail system"
| whatever form it took for whatever prestige it might
| bring. Jumbo jets are cool too.
| madcaptenor wrote:
| or Levy's 2021 version for the whole US and adjacent bits
| of Canada:
| https://pedestrianobservations.com/2021/03/22/high-speed-
| rai... , which follows
|
| They did the math and decided to connect Florida to the
| main Eastern component (based on there being enough
| demand for Atlanta-Florida travel), so there are four
| components - the main Eastern component, Texas,
| California (+Vegas, Phoenix), Pacific Northwest (Portland
| to Vancouver)
| Kon-Peki wrote:
| I don't think you can take any national plan seriously if
| it doesn't include Chicago/Memphis/Jackson/New Orleans.
| Passenger rail service has been in almost continuous
| operation on that route since a little after the Civil
| War. It has to be there for the symbolism alone.
| TylerE wrote:
| An industry with incredible capital overhead and razor
| thin margins is no place for symbolism.
|
| Times change.
|
| In 1860 New Orleans was the 5th largest city in the
| country.
|
| Today it is 52nd.
| madcaptenor wrote:
| Levy addresses this, and agrees with you:
| https://pedestrianobservations.com/2021/03/22/high-speed-
| rai... Basically, Amtrak started out with the _existing_
| rail network, which is going to be oriented to
| early-20th-century population centers, and so New Orleans
| is well-served by Amtrak standards. But a modern network
| in the South would be oriented more towards those parts
| of the South that have grown - Texas and the Piedmont -
| and less towards New Orleans, Memphis, and St. Louis.
| Kon-Peki wrote:
| Levy is wrong. There, I said it.
|
| American growth of the last 80 years is incompatible with
| the future of the world. You won't save a sprawly mess by
| putting a high speed rail station in the center of it.
|
| If it was an important city before the age of the
| automobile, it has a chance. Put the "future" rail
| network in the cities that have a future.
|
| Point number two, and probably even more important than
| the first, is the fact that you have to get your plan
| through a million committees, and through Congress, etc.
| You need support. His plan won't get it. Too much of it
| goes through places that hate trains and "socialism". And
| then it tells the people that have nostalgic memories of
| a railroad that lifted their family out of the Jim Crow
| south to go pound sand. His plan will never go further
| than his blog :)
|
| Would you like an analogy to this situation?
|
| Everybody in tech has incredible ideas for the future.
| But the startup world is littered with companies that
| have had no success at all getting from point A to point
| B despite billions in VC money.
| madcaptenor wrote:
| That's a good point. On the other hand, the future of the
| world probably includes sea level rise so New Orleans may
| not have much of a future.
| Kon-Peki wrote:
| And I fully accept that point :)
|
| But as long as it exists, New Orleans _means something_
| to America.
| TylerE wrote:
| But why does "mean something" translate to "build non-
| ecomically viable HSR"?
| Kon-Peki wrote:
| Are we stipulating that it's less economically viable
| than a brand-new line somewhere else?
| TylerE wrote:
| Yes. It's an area with AT BEST stagnant growth, and
| likely contraction, versus areas like the Triangle in NC
| that are poorly served by rail and rapidly growing.
| teloli wrote:
| Distance alone isn't enough of a reason though, Beijing-
| Shanghai is 1200 KM and yet you can cover that by train no
| problem in < 5 hours: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beijing%E
| 2%80%93Shanghai_high-...
| glonq wrote:
| Canada is even worse. We are proud of our cross-country rail's
| history, but today it is slow and expensive compared to other
| systems.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| It's almost forgotten how much resentment Americans had to the
| private railroads. They would buy land along the tracks, refuse
| to make a stop in your town, and start a new town. There was a
| phrase, 'railroaded' to describe being a victim of this power
| imbalance.
|
| As such, people saw the roads as belonging to everyone but
| railroads being to the benefit of a few.
| vidanay wrote:
| A significant portion of the land wasn't bought, it was
| acquired through eminent domain.
|
| And an even more significant portion of the land was simply
| stolen from natives (both by settlers and by the railroads.)
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| I see both those cases as "stolen but with a kangaroo court
| veneer of due process"
| mastercheif wrote:
| To go against the grain somewhat, I think distance is an
| overrated factor in regard to its impact in preventing US
| passenger rail adoption.
|
| I think the most overlooked factor is poor intra-city transit
| and lack of mixed use density in our city cores.
|
| I recently traveled to Germany on business, a few nights in
| Berlin then took the ICE inter-city train to Munich.
|
| The ICE train dropped me off at the main station in Munich--my
| hotel was 7.3 miles driving from the main station. I was able
| to jump on the u-bahn and with a quick transfer at Odeonsplatz
| get to my hotel in half-an-hour including a 10 minute walk from
| the train station.
|
| Door to door from Berlin to the hotel in Munich was 05:00
| hours. If one were to drive, maps says 361mi/580km traveled if
| driving direct with a drive time of 05:30.
|
| For comparisons sake, let's take a hypothetical trip from
| Dallas Union Station to Apple's engineering headquarters in
| Austin, TX 14.7mi/24.6km from the Austin train station.
|
| According to Apple Maps, taking public transit would take 09:00
| hours. Driving direct from Dallas Union Station to Apple HQ in
| Austin is 187mi/300km in total with a drive time of 03:00.
| reddog wrote:
| Actually the US has the worlds most efficient train system:
| https://www.masterresource.org/railroads/us-most-advanced-ra...
|
| For long hauls, we use our RRs to move freight and airlines to
| move people. By traveling at 600mph instead of 60mph (the speed
| of most European train travel - intercity high speed rail is
| rare and expensive) I can get to anyplace in the continental US
| in under 5 hours from my home in Austin.
| Milner08 wrote:
| Intercity trains often go much faster than 60mph. More like
| an average of 90mph with a speed limit 125mph on the main
| lines in UK. Thats not even the HS1 (and eventually HS2),
| that's on our old AF Victorian rail roads.
|
| The argument for trains is often more about taking out the
| need to drive everywhere than the need to fly from coast to
| coast though, as a train is never going to beat that.
| PeterHolzwarth wrote:
| America actually has a rather vast and impressive rail system.
| It's just used almost entirely for shipping.
| aj7 wrote:
| Exactly. People's time is too valuable when per capita GDP is
| $60k.
| asdajksah2123 wrote:
| And that's why they prefer a mode of transport that
| requires you to drive an hour outside the city in traffic,
| arrive at least an hour before your flight so you can go
| through the indignity of airport security, take an hour
| long flight, and then wait for bags and then drive an hour
| back into your destination city in traffic?
|
| Total time 4 hrs.
|
| Or they prefer driving through traffic from one city to the
| other for 4.5 hrs where they have to have complete
| concentration so they literally don't die and kill a bunch
| of other people?
|
| As opposed to a 4.5 hr train ride where they have lots of
| seating space, an extremely comfortable ride with great
| views where they can basically just sleep through the trip
| and/or work comfortably on their laptops with great wifi?
|
| These are not hypotheticals. These are literally your
| options if you were to travel from NYC to Boston.
|
| All the modes of transport take about 4-5 hrs. Train is
| significantly better in almost every way. The only problem
| is that Amtrak subsidizes the rest of its highly
| unprofitable network which means they price gouge the
| NorthEast corridor and under invest in it, making it more
| expensive, and not as good as it should be.
|
| Even with a sub par train service relative to European and
| Asian counterparts, train is easily the best option on this
| route.
| ghaff wrote:
| That does assume you live conveniently to the train
| station in Boston or the suburban station to the south. I
| do generally take the train to NYC but mostly because I
| hate driving into NYC so much. I have to drive an hour in
| the wrong direction to get to Route 128 so the time
| tradeoff actually isn't great.
| rr888 wrote:
| I used to think this too, now I live here the American system
| actually works pretty well. Railways are actually very busy
| with freight, which keeps it off the roads and freight doesn't
| mind pauses and running overnight. Lots of rural connections
| are much easier to drive. Even between cities its easier
| because for train connections you'd have to get to the station
| (usually central) where if you drive you can go directly where
| you want. As a result people are much more mobile and can live
| in a wider area in USA, where in Europe to commute to the
| office you really have to live near a train station.
| avianlyric wrote:
| This does make the fundamental assumption that train travel
| and driving are equal from a users perspective.
|
| Train travel has the advantage of not needing to do the
| driving. You can spend that travel time doing something
| productive, rather than staring at tarmac. Additionally train
| travel is potentially more accessible (assuming proper
| investment in infrastructure). The obvious example being that
| blind people are never going drive anywhere, regardless of
| how "mobile" it makes them.
|
| While your point about being close to train stations has some
| validity. For the vast majority of European urban, and sub-
| urban areas, a fast train connection is only 20-30mins away
| via local public transport. So living "close" in terms of
| time, doesn't require you to be physically close to the train
| station.
|
| Finally high-speed rail, is really fast. Up to 200mph fast,
| well over double what's realistically safe in a private car.
| So while the train might not be direct, it's going that much
| faster, you can still get to your destination quicker than a
| car.
|
| To provide some context, many Amtrak lines are limited to
| 80mph, and only a small number can achieve Amtraks top speeds
| of 150mph. That's ignoring the frequent delays due to track
| congestion and freight priority, which results in even slower
| average speeds. It's not a surprise that trains look
| unappealing to many Americans, when the average US passenger
| train can only just keep up with a passenger car.
| rr888 wrote:
| You're right of course, I've been stuck on the M1 on a
| Sunday night and watch a train doing 100 mph blast past.
| There are good and bad parts on either side. Yes driving
| means you dont need to concentrate, but you're stuck on
| someone else's timetable, you can't play your own music or
| stop off at interesting points along the way.
| PaulsWallet wrote:
| > you can't play your own music
|
| Wear headphones.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| But that means the modern USA misses out on the inherent
| benefits of density. This is a weird counter rational
| behavior-- it is in everyone's perceived best interest to
| live in big separate homes, but the collective social
| economic benefit of living together is evident. Also evident
| is how sprawl sucks vitality from culture.
| geraldwhen wrote:
| No thank you. I live near enough howling dogs. I will never
| forget the peace and quiet when I stepped into my first
| house.
|
| Why anyone lives in apartments by choice is beyond me. The
| noise is absurd.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| Noise? My kids make noise. With that, the difference
| between a house and an apartment is negligible. I love
| living in a nice city. Ultra convenient.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I love living in a walkable suburban neighborhood with a
| supermarket and home store within easy (sub-5 minute)
| driving distance. Quiet, spacious, ultra convenient. More
| so than living in the city, because I can carry my
| purchases in my car all the way into my house.
|
| YMMV. Live where you want. There is no objectively better
| answer, just preference.
| [deleted]
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > Why anyone lives in apartments by choice is beyond me.
| The noise is absurd.
|
| I am sorry but you westerners have no clue how to make
| decent apartments. London is full of 'luxury' highrises
| with basic design mistakes and complete failures.
|
| In czech republic they would never build drywall
| separation between apartments, its always brick or
| concrete with real noise insulation.
|
| The staircase is never attached to the walls of the unit,
| so you don't hear every step of people walking around
|
| Premium towers here are built with zero green space.
| Buildings of 100's of units where every unit has their
| own boiler are a complete waste
|
| Windows get built in such a way that it's impossible to
| clean them or install shades, etc.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Plenty of condos in the US (and I'm guessing London) use
| concrete walls between units. This isn't something magic
| that only the Czech Republic understands.
|
| But concrete is pretty unfriendly to the environment and
| has a low expected lifespan. Much of the US is covered in
| trees, so an average apartment is primarily constructed
| from wood. Condos and apartments are generally
| constructed to different standards, due to the former
| being intended as a purchase, and the latter as a rental.
| PaulsWallet wrote:
| You are assuming you only have 2 choices, single-family
| home or apartment. That's a very American perspective
| because most of America only allows those two but in a
| proper city you have townhomes, duplexes, casitas,
| bungalows and many more options that aren't just
| apartments. However, most of American is zoned
| exclusively for single-family homes and not mixed-use so
| like the parent comment said, you don't get benefits of
| proper density which includes many home types.
| rr888 wrote:
| I was going to say you're wrong because here in the NE
| there are loads of townhouses, duplexes and bungalows,
| but you're right - in the US single family homes and
| apartments dominate.
| https://www.census.gov/construction/chars/highlights.html
| ipsi wrote:
| What noise? I've been living in an apartment for three
| and a half years and the noise is really not a big deal.
| The primary issue is being quite close to a busy-ish
| street, which can be annoying with the windows open. With
| the windows closed, it's basically a non-issue. And when
| I do hear my neighbours, it's heavily muffled and just
| turning on the TV is enough to drown it out.
|
| Yes, older buildings can have terrible sound insulation,
| but modern apartments are well-built and you won't hear a
| thing (at least in Germany, and in my experience).
| rr888 wrote:
| I get that, I live with children in an apartment in a city.
| However most people dont want that, the trend to WFH means
| people are moving to smaller, quieter locations away from
| other people.
| richiebful1 wrote:
| Is that driven by preference or cost? In my own case, I
| moved to a smaller town (mostly) because it's a lot
| cheaper. Most of the denser areas I would prefer to live
| would be significantly more expensive than rural
| Appalachia.
| tyrfing wrote:
| Preference.
|
| https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2022/05/23/did-
| the-p...
| [deleted]
| stratom wrote:
| It also shows how much the train networks focus on domestic
| travel.
|
| In nearly all bigger countries it is possible to reach most
| bigger cities within the 5h. But journeys in this time-frame
| seldomly go much beyond the border. There is still much
| optimization potential for transnational travel in Europe's train
| network.
| adamjb wrote:
| Fascinating how clearly you can see this with the 5hr limit
| from Dusseldorf being pretty much exactly the French border
| from the Atlantic to Switzerland
| majewsky wrote:
| Wendover had a video on this topic just this week:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9jirFqex6g
|
| For a short summary, the basic problem is that rail
| infrastructure is paid for by national funds, so there is a
| bigger incentive to connect two places within the same country
| than to connect one place within the country to another place
| within a neighboring country.
|
| Wendover theorizes that the decoupling of rail networks from
| rail service operators (as pushed by the EU-level government)
| can lead to new demand for international routes as budget
| operators spring up that are less tied to the demands of a
| particular national government.
| mnd999 wrote:
| I'm now looking at whether you can get to Paris and Brussels
| within 5 hours from the village of Wendover in the UK.
|
| And yes, you can.
| iggldiggl wrote:
| > Wendover theorizes that the decoupling of rail networks
| from rail service operators (as pushed by the EU-level
| government) can lead to new demand for international routes
| as budget operators spring up that are less tied to the
| demands of a particular national government.
|
| Some problems with that approach are
|
| 1. It doesn't take that many different operators before you
| start running into capacity limits of the network and get
| into a situation where additional services (when you want
| even more competition) cannot be scheduled without _actively
| worsening_ the services offered by existing operators
| (including operators that might not even be competing within
| the same market segment, i.e. like long distance operators
| vs. regional and commuter service operators or freight
| operators).
|
| 2. In principle connections are a core part of railways'
| service offerings (especially in countries that aren't as
| centralised as e.g. the stereotype of France), but attractive
| connection times are only possible between a very limited
| number of trains, so with multiple competing long distance
| operators who gets to decide which operator gets the path
| with the attractive connection times and who doesn't?
| Attractive connections also require through-ticketing in
| terms of passenger rights, so you won't be left stranded if
| you miss a connection because of preceding delays, and both
| scheduled/coordinated connections and through-ticketing run
| counter to the mantra of absolutely free-for-all competition.
|
| 3. For the wheel-rail interface to work well, you
| definitively need to take a holistic approach between the
| needs of the infrastructure and the needs of the vehicles
| running on that infrastructure. Introducing a hard legal
| split between infrastructure owner and train operating
| companies in the name of free competition unfortunately tends
| to turn that interface into a legal and bureaucratic quagmire
| that is anything but efficient for the railway system as a
| whole.
|
| For example in Germany construction works (outside of
| emergency repairs) are required to be scheduled several years
| (not just a year plus a bit so its known in time for the next
| timetable, but some years more) in advance. At that point you
| already need to specify the exact and precise length of any
| required possessions, but at the same time due to the rules
| for tendering construction works, you're also not supposed to
| specify the exact method of doing those construction works,
| so for anything slightly more complex how are you now
| supposed to calculate the exact length for the required
| possessions if you aren't actually allowed to specify how the
| construction works are to be executed?
|
| Or for another example: Within the wheel-rail interface you
| cannot avoid a certain amount of wear and tear, especially on
| more curvy stretches of line. This affects both the train
| operators (wheels) as well as the infrastructure operator
| (rails). Ideally you'd work out some compromise that is
| tenable for both sides of the interface, and normally
| somewhat more wear and tear on the wheels is to be preferred,
| because wheels can re-profiled and/or changed in fixed,
| covered maintenance facilities (i.e. better working
| conditions) and while the trains are potentially out of
| service for regular maintenance anyway, whereas rail renewals
| need to potentially brave the elements and either block rail
| traffic or else need to be conducted at unattractive times
| (for workers, i.e. on weekends and especially at night).
|
| The legal separation between train operating companies and
| infrastructure owners nevertheless has led train operating
| companies to possibly try optimising the wheel-rail interface
| for their own benefit, which has meant that on some heavily
| used routes with tight(ish) curves, due to excessive wear
| rails now have to be renewed every year or two, which longer
| term absolutely isn't sustainable in terms of the demands
| placed on the maintenance personnel of the infrastructure
| operator (and never mind the costs, too). (Normally, rail
| life before a complete renewal is measured in decades!)
|
| So now "the empire strikes back" and the infrastructure
| operator installs hardened rails in order to return to a
| somewhat more manageable and sustainable maintenance
| schedule, but because the vehicle operators haven't been
| prepared for that switch, they now suddenly find themselves
| with excessive wheel wear (and unfortunately at a point in
| time when due to outside political events there isn't much
| excess capacity in the market for railway wheels). In the
| end, it's ultimately the passenger who suffers here.
| Aachen wrote:
| I will admit to having only read the first point of the
| long post, so I'll just respond to that:
|
| > It doesn't take that many different operators before you
| start running into capacity limits of the network
|
| Don't get this. If there is that much demand, then clearly
| it makes sense to build out the system? More rails, higher
| speed, and/or better bypasses for trains that need to stop
| at each station for example.
|
| It's usually a hard question to predict where public or
| investment money is best spent, but this situation seems
| like it would be quite clear.
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| Yes, funding is one thing. Other thing is that history of
| control systems and regulations is wild. For each border
| crossing you need different pantographs (some locomotives
| have four different pantographs for different countries), the
| engineer has to be able to identify different signalling
| systems, the train needs different computer systems for
| interpreting different control systems ...
|
| There are initiatives like ETCS which partially improve the
| control situation, but even that has lots of national
| variations and takes ages to rollout.
|
| Historic systems with little funding (relative to need) are
| fun.
| terramex wrote:
| > For a short summary, the basic problem is that rail
| infrastructure is paid for by national funds
|
| EU co-founded projects can be forced to operate only
| domestically too. For example polish high speed railways:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pendolino#Poland
|
| > certification for international operation is not seen as a
| priority, as the trains are restricted to domestic services
| for an initial 10 years under the terms of a grant from the
| EU Cohesion Fund which covered 22% of the project cost.[31]
| oittaa wrote:
| There are a lot of plans for international train lines in
| Europe and some of them are actually being built. If you
| check the Wikipedia page of the the Spanish rail service[1],
| you'll see that new connections to France should be completed
| sometime around 2023. Currently the only high speed link to
| France is from Barcelona, which makes traveling from Madrid
| and Spain's Northern coast to Paris more time consuming.
|
| There's also a Helsinki-Tallinn tunnel plan, which is more
| like in an exploration/planning phase, but that should
| connect those cities and make them function almost like one.
| Instead of a two hour ferry ride it would be more like a
| 30min train ride. Oresund Bridge basically did that to
| Copenhagen and Malmo.
|
| [1]:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AVE#Lines_under_construction
| Archelaos wrote:
| Nice observation. It is interesting that Bruxelles and
| Strasbourg are an exception.
| henvic wrote:
| I think you are thinking about European countries.
|
| If you take the biggest countries worldwide, this doesn't
| apply.
| nicoburns wrote:
| Well yes, the OP is a map of trains in European countries.
| black_puppydog wrote:
| It also shows an effect that the focus on high speed rail
| brings: rural areas are often very badly connected. Here in
| France they've even kept shutting down regional lines. That
| creates the train equivalent of "fly-over states": areas that
| you see from the train while going through, but that it would
| be impractical to go _to_.
| redtexture wrote:
| This is the strong argument against high speed rail in the
| USA.
|
| We don't even have anything close to regional rail, and
| highspeed rail would consume all public capital that would be
| used to improve regional rail systems.
| awiesenhofer wrote:
| > public capital that would be used to improve regional
| rail systems
|
| _could_ be used, but we all know thats not how it works
| ...
| redtexture wrote:
| Commuter rail expansion and operations is the primary
| capital consumption area now, and there are more than a
| few such local / regional rail systems that could use
| several billion dollars each, on a continuing basis, for
| equipment, roadbed and station expansion.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Existing freight rails are so bad that passenger rail
| should get its own pairs of tracks in many cases (both to
| be higher speed and to serve the places people actually
| live, work and shop), and if you're going to the expense of
| building new you may as well build it to support higher
| speeds.
| chrismartin wrote:
| Has anyone considered the following? In a small town, you
| have a section of track running parallel to high speed rail.
| The track has a small and short "local" train (maybe just a
| couple of cars) that picks up passengers and accelerates to
| maybe 80 MPH, while the high-speed train slows to the same
| speed. The trains run next to each other for a couple of
| miles, some doors open between them, and people can step
| between the "local" train and the "long distance" train.
|
| This lets the high-speed train serve a lot more places
| without losing much speed. Maybe the local train serves
| several towns in the area.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| It has been considered and basically it's not really
| reliable or practical or safe.
| FVYPblNGl7R9ZAc wrote:
| Is there any writings on this? It sounds interesting.
| bombcar wrote:
| The problem is it's _doable_ but if you do it, you might
| as well have a slow, regional railroad that goes between
| the stops of the fast international railroad. So a local
| /express situation, which is much simpler technology-
| wise.
| black_puppydog wrote:
| It was also planned for cargo (e.g. at the Megahub
| Lehrte) but didn't really pan out there either, even
| though ISO containers are much more predictable in their
| self-propelled movement than humans. At least all the
| material from that site now shows much automation, but it
| all happens at rest.
| samatman wrote:
| I've mused about a similar idea for California's high speed
| rail, which, should it ever be built, would be rendered
| impractically slow by frequent stops.
|
| The idea is to drop cars without slowing down. These cars
| would have brakes, that's it. Before the station, drop the
| car, it slows enough to give safe time for switching, and
| cruises to a halt at the local station.
|
| That's drop off, pickup is the slow train, which runs twice
| a day in each direction and assembles the carriage on the
| way.
|
| Impractical for various reasons, sure. But what if.
| not2b wrote:
| The plan for California high speed rail was to replace
| plane flights and long distance car travel, not to have
| frequent stops (at least 40 miles/65 km between stops,
| sometimes longer). Only the major cities.
| mitchdoogle wrote:
| Except "flyover" states are not just rural areas. There are
| tons of big cities in non-coastal areas of the US. I don't
| think people who use the term are maliciously doing it, but
| it does diminish the lives of millions of people as
| unimportant and inconsequential compared to the "important"
| areas on the coasts
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Except "flyover" states are not just rural areas
|
| Not just, no. But, looking at population density by states,
| you've got roughly:
|
| (1) the coastal states way at the top (except Alaska,
| Oregon, and Maine), (2) non-coastal Mississippi River
| states, Oklahoma, Colorado, and Arizona, and Vermont in the
| middle (3) Everything else.
|
| They are very different environments for things like
| passenger transport economics.
|
| > There are tons of big cities in non-coastal areas of the
| US.
|
| Define "big city"? There are _three_ (out of 24 in the US)
| metropolitan areas with a population over 2.5 million where
| the principal city is located in a state without ocean,
| Gulf of Mexico, or Great Lakes coast; 0 out of 9 of your
| cutoff is 5 million.
| ThunderSizzle wrote:
| Well, yes. New Yorkers and Californians see the rest of the
| country as useless, and most don't bother to learn that
| entire cities exist outside of their coastal regions.
|
| It's also part of the current hyperpoliticalization we're
| seeing.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > New Yorkers and Californians see the rest of the
| country as useless,
|
| I've known lots of both (more of the latter), none of
| whom believe anything like that.
| 88840-8855 wrote:
| I would love to see the same map for China. They have a fantastic
| HSR network and great trains.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| "Not very far right now" seems to be the answer in Ukraine.
| bisRepetita wrote:
| Little usability nitpick: it is really hard for me to see the
| connection Paris - London (less than 2.5 hours in real life thx
| to Eurostar). You need to very precisely mouse over Gare du Nord,
| which is hard, since it seems hidden by the other train station
| and airport nearby.
|
| Not sure if at a certain scale, one should see all the
| conenctions form all the train stations in Paris?
| jobigoud wrote:
| Taking into account metro and RER rides should fix this issue I
| think.
| jobigoud wrote:
| So what's the longest distance between two such connected
| stations?
| Jamie9912 wrote:
| Is the website not working for anyone else? It says hover over a
| city to see the isochrones from that city. But when I do so
| nothing happens at all?
| em3rgent0rdr wrote:
| not working for me. Neither linux desktop chrome nor firefox
| nor android chrome.
| fguerraz wrote:
| Same here
| vultour wrote:
| Looks like the API returns either 429 Too Many Requests or a
| 500 error, so it's probably hugged to death.
| dareiff wrote:
| Too much traffic -- all endpoints once on the page are erroring
| out.
| pahn wrote:
| I made an interactive art installation on this question once: A
| black box with a knob where you could adjust how much time you
| have, then it would offer you (Google streetview) panoramas of
| the locations it found within your distance, and in the end even
| print a paper slip with your travel itinerary to take with you.
|
| The installation used realtime data (Google directions API): I
| somehow figured out, that if I would run this from a local
| machine and reset the browser frequently, Google would let me do
| this even without an API key... they certainly sensed something
| was awry and I did get API warnings and captchas because of
| 'suspicious traffic on my network', but they were nice enough not
| to block me completely. I strongly doubt this would still work
| though, this was in 2017.
|
| Pictures and videos of the installation:
| https://maschinenzeitmaschine.de/derweil/
| mustacheemperor wrote:
| I have been wishing Apple or Google maps would add this as a
| feature for at least five years now. When I'm in a new city for
| work, and I know I have 90 minutes til my next meeting, it
| would be massively helpful to see every lunch place in a 15-25
| minute walking radius. The fact that there's still not a
| "search/filter by transit time" feature in any Maps app seems
| like proof there's not enough competition in that space in
| 2022.
| jsemrau wrote:
| I made this app a bunch of years ago where I sourced events
| starting in the next 0-3 hours nearby. Unfortunately not
| enough people had this problem. Still found it useful.
| [deleted]
| jgust wrote:
| I think what Maps really needs is more widgets that reduce
| the screen real estate of the map until we can finally drop
| that feature entirely.
| 6510 wrote:
| On iphone 4 there is no map left now
| ajmurmann wrote:
| I started a similar project a few years ago and the real
| problem for any new player is just data availability. I was
| able to get Open Street Map data, but I also needed data on
| businesses with ratings and photos. IMO this creates a huge
| moat against anyone entering the market.
| ohg wrote:
| Awesome
| patrick91 wrote:
| that's a pretty cool project!
| phreeza wrote:
| So which starting point covers the largest number of people you
| can reach? I am guessing Brussels since it covers a good portion
| of the Blue Banana, plus Paris and other big French cities.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Banana
| nowahe wrote:
| (Semi)surprisingly, Strasbourg looks like a good contender as
| well, as it covers a good portion of the blue banana, most of
| Germany, and about half of France
| brunoluiz wrote:
| That is a very nice app and, funnily enough, I was doing this
| manually (via Trainline) yesterday after watching this Wendover
| Production video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9jirFqex6g.
|
| One suggestion for the app: allow us to pin a city when clicking
| on the desktop version ;)
| woodruffw wrote:
| For the Europeans on HN: on the East coast of the US, the
| furthest you can get by train in ~5h is roughly Boston to NYC, or
| NYC to Washington, DC. Both are roughly equidistant (~220 miles,
| ~354 kilometers).
|
| One of the perverse things with our passenger rail network is
| that you can actually take take trains that "only" take 2.5
| hours, but: they run nonstop point-to-point, and any subsequent
| connection you make (e.g. to Richmond, a major city in Virginia)
| will be on a diesel train that shares trackage with CSX or
| another major freight line. The end result is that traveling the
| extra ~90 miles from Washington, DC to Richmond generally takes
| over 3 hours, when it should really take less than an hour.
| jonas21 wrote:
| ~50 million people live along the Boston to DC corridor. That's
| roughly the population of Spain, and not much less than that of
| France.
| fatnoah wrote:
| Boston to Philadelphia a closer approximation. The Acela is
| scheduled for 5h 1m for that trip. I travel between Boston and
| New York by train frequently, and even the slower regional
| service takes < 4 hours. Either way, still not a great
| comparison to Europe.
| woodruffw wrote:
| Sorry, this was confusing wording on my part -- I was trying
| to say that Boston/NY or NY/DC is consistently under 5 hours,
| and that just about everything else is _over_ 5 hours,
| illustrating a gap in our network.
|
| NYC to DC is also consistently around 3.5 hours, even with
| the slower NE Regional.
| fatnoah wrote:
| Ah, gotcha!
| danwee wrote:
| When people talk about how bad trains are in Germany and how good
| (relatively speaking) they are in Spain, well, one word:
| connectivity. Hover over any city in Germany and you'll see
| almost no gaps in the map. Hover over any northern city in Spain
| and you'll see no direct connection by train among them (!).
| [deleted]
| barbazoo wrote:
| Beautiful visualization.
| [deleted]
| Balgair wrote:
| It's funny that Ireland isn't on here considering it's the
| largest English speaking country in the EU now!
| aidenn0 wrote:
| I've had an Amtrak train delayed by more than 5h on the West
| Coast, so here at least the answer is potentially 0. I grew up in
| the NE USA where Amtrak is usable, if not up to European
| standards, so trains here are particularly disappointing.
| micheljansen wrote:
| Very well done! I played around with this sort of stuff many
| years for a property search engine startup. I tried to make a
| "max commute distance" filter. It was much harder than I thought
| at the time!
| jbj wrote:
| Amazing map.
|
| Hovering around over South Sweden and North Germany, makes it
| quite obvious that the Femern tunnel will make a difference in
| connecting that area.
|
| Same for connecting north from Lombardy through the mountains.
| kzrdude wrote:
| Sweden-Denmark is already well connected too, but I hope that
| norway-swesen gets improved.
| wgnmstr12 wrote:
| There is a lot of what-if here, but the reality is that most
| people in the USA prefer the flexibility and speed of (1) Driving
| wherever and whenever and carrying all your stuff with you, and
| then (2) flying to your destination for speed. You can cross the
| east coast in 3 hours or the go to the west cost in 6 on a
| convenient red-eye.
|
| Taking the train is more a novelty, and unclear who would
| actually use it regularly because it takes much longer (10 hours
| east cost, 20 hours coast to coast), transport on either endpoint
| requires you to park or taxi, and you lose all flexibility.
|
| We like the idea of the train more than the reality of the train.
| I've lived in various places around the world where you had to
| take mass transit always, and all it does is add one to two hours
| to your commute when I would have much preferred to drive.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| You can still drive in Europe. Cars and roads still exist.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Not only that, cars are still more popular than trains.
| Wouldn't believe it from comments on HN, of course.
| fstrazzante wrote:
| awesome project! I like it!
| maximilianroos wrote:
| Which city can you reach the most area in 5 hours?
|
| Top contenders:
|
| - Paris, Gare de Lyon (doesn't seem to include going to Gare du
| Nord and going to London in this?)
|
| - Brussels -- can go as far as Newcastle or Avignon
|
| - Random ones in the center of Germany which cover all of Germany
| maximilianroos wrote:
| If you zoom in to select London Kings Cross, I think that wins
| jobigoud wrote:
| I just realized it's not symmetric. If you click Paris it
| highlights Perpignan (in the South), but if you click Perpignan
| it doesn't reach Paris at all. Same for Brussels and Newcastle.
| foota wrote:
| Maybe express trains only go one way?
| ElemenoPicuares wrote:
| Interface seems to be broken on mobile iOS.
| tomduncalf wrote:
| You just need to close the instruction dialog which is
| obscuring the whole view
| ElemenoPicuares wrote:
| No -- the actual controls on the map don't work for me. If it
| works for you then it must be something weird on my device.
| julian_t wrote:
| Halfway between LA and SF
| alexott wrote:
| I can't say that's accurate. For my area it shows that Kassel is
| 3 hours away, although direct train goes in less than an hour,
| and even with intermediate stop, it's slightly more than an hour.
| South of Germany isn't connected at all, although I can get to
| Ingolstadt in less that 5 hours...
| have_faith wrote:
| Similarly it told me Sheffield to London (kings cross) is 4
| hours when it's a little over 2 hours normally.
|
| edit: I think I read it wrong wrong, it put a small darker ring
| around kings cross and I got 3hr and 4hr colours mixed up (:
| bergenty wrote:
| I don't like trains though, it takes so long especially in a
| large country like the US. Great for recreation purposes or
| travel within places closer than 3 hours by car but not
| otherwise.
| baby wrote:
| Being in the east of France, it's a bit sad how misconnected we
| are with the west of France. (Lyon <-> Bordeaux you'd think can
| be done in 2 hours, but no it'll take like 6 hours).
| [deleted]
| Fiahil wrote:
| Yes, that's because everything here is centered on Paris
| jobigoud wrote:
| It's crazy, I can reach Strasbourg or Bruxelles from Bordeaux,
| but not Clermont-Ferrand...
| hyakosm wrote:
| We're missing a high-speed connection here. The Bordeaux-Sete
| line is relatively slow (130-160 km/h) and handle a lot of
| different traffic (freight, regional, TGV, intercity). If the
| Bordeaux-Toulouse high-speed line is done (planned 2032), that
| travel time would be shortened.
| jeffbee wrote:
| I wish we had this attitude in California! Bordeaux is a city
| of roughly the same population and economic activity as Fresno,
| but there are many in California who still argue that Fresno
| should not be connected by high-speed rail to any place.
|
| California's cities are all arranged in a line, it should be
| the easiest high-speed rail project ever, but it languishes due
| to lack of imagination.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > California's cities are all arranged in a line
|
| No, they aren't.
|
| > it should be the easiest high-speed rail project ever
|
| The error in the preceding claim isn't the only reason why
| this one is false, too (geography and preexisting land use
| also play roles).
|
| > but it languishes due to lack of imagination.
|
| Mostly, it has been delayed by lack of funding, not
| imagination, but its not really "languishing" right now,
| either.
| humanistbot wrote:
| We're of completely opposite minds on this. A stop in Fresno
| should have been sacrificed so that California High Speed
| Rail could still happen for the majority of the state.
| Routing through the Central Valley was practically required
| for political reasons, and now the entire project has
| collapsed into a parody of itself.
|
| California's cities are not all arranged in a single line.
| They are in two roughly parallel lines, separated by up to
| hundreds of miles and across mountains. There are the coastal
| cities of SF, SJ, SLO, LA, and SD (follows highway 1) and the
| Central Valley line of Sacramento, Stockton, Merced, Fresno,
| Bakersfield, Lancaster/Palmdale (follows highway 99 mostly).
| The 5 is a compromise interstate that runs in between these
| two, and there is very little development there. If you've
| ever driven the 5, you know what I'm talking about. Even most
| towns "on" the 5 are a few miles away.
|
| The HSR line could have been drawn from LA to SF more or less
| following the 5, stopping at the outskirts of Bakersfield and
| then zooming straight through to a fork that stops next in
| either Gilroy (en route to the Bay Area) or Modesto (en route
| to Stockton and Sacramento). This would have been cheaper,
| shorter, and less encumbered by the need to get permits,
| approvals, easements, and the like from everyone in the
| Central Valley. Meanwhile, the chosen HSR route through the
| Central Valley runs through dozens of different counties,
| cities, tax districts, and regional planning agencies.
|
| Also, Fresno is far less dense than Bordeaux, and has a
| population that generally considers a mile to be a "long
| walk."
| jeffbee wrote:
| The problem with this logic is that an SF-LA line that
| serves nothing else actually fails to serve most of the
| state. The median Californian lives in Ventura, so if you
| just want to serve a majority you can do LA-SD and call it
| done. Or, you can do Bakersfield-Chico with a spur to SJ
| and Oakland, you're also serving the majority of the state
| that way.
|
| The latter is way easier to build in particular the spine
| through the Capitol.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > The problem with this logic is that an SF-LA line that
| serves nothing else actually fails to serve most of the
| state.
|
| LA plus the Bay Area _is_ most of the State, but travel
| between those two endpoints is a lot less than that
| _plus_ travel between each of them and the Central
| Valley, and along the Central Valley's North-South axis.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > A stop in Fresno should have been sacrificed so that
| California High Speed Rail could still happen for the
| majority of the state.
|
| Sacrificing the stop in Fresno (and the other Central
| Valley cities) would not have enabled HSR for the majority
| of the state. If anything, it would have made it less
| viable, not only politically (both in terms of federal
| _and_ state politics), but also in terms of meeting the
| actual official goals of the project.
| steren wrote:
| Nice. It doesn't seem to play very nice with cities that have
| multiple stations. If you hover Paris, Gare de Lyon gets selected
| most of the time. But if you zoom in, you can select other Paris
| stations (e.g. Gare de L'Est) which leads to different results
| jobigoud wrote:
| And the station at CDG airport is quite hard to pick, but has
| much more penetration into the UK than Gare de Lyon.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| I can go about
|
| > Application error: a client-side exception has occurred (see
| the browser console for more information).
|
| kilometers.
| 2dvisio wrote:
| Basically, just click anywhere on the south of Italy to
| understand how infrastructure investment can be done poorly.
| d--b wrote:
| This is great, but it would be better if the selection of the
| station was a textbox or a smaller map. Right now you have to
| zoom in to select a station, and then carefully zoom out to see
| the reach.
| emaginniss wrote:
| Or if you could click to "lock on" to a station and then zoom
| out
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(page generated 2022-07-29 23:00 UTC)