Very nice! A companion to Rachel Binx' Amtrak Explorer, which shows routes. https://amtrakexplorer.com/
Show HN: Trains.fyi – a live map of passenger trains in the US and Canada
201–210 of 316 posts
Re: Show HN: Trains.fyi – a live map of passenger trains in the US and Canada
#202Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is starting to change, the discounts for early booking and/or slower trains can be up to 50% these days: https://livejapan.com/en/in-tohoku/in-pref-miyagi/in-sendai_...
They have a tiny number of those 50% discounts that are always sold out even if you apply as soon as ticket sales open, IME. And note that even then they're only on the less popular lines - you'll never see a discount like that for Tokyo-Kyoto.
Puratto Kodama is available basically always (for slower Kodama trains only, of course) and around a third cheaper at Y9,800 for Tokyo-Kyoto.
https://nihonshock.com/2010/02/puratto-kodama-cheap-shinkans...
Re: Show HN: Trains.fyi – a live map of passenger trains in the US and Canada
#203Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Acela does the same trip in 3.5 hours. I just rode it last week, and it actually took 3 hours, not 3.5. Most of the NEC corridor from DC to NYC has a speed limit of 125mph; from NYC to New Haven, it's generally 70mph (!), from New Haven thence to about Kingston generally 90mph, and from there to Boston it's mostly 150mph. Given the density of the corridor, Amtrak should be trying for 150-220mph speed limits, but ev…
Could cut it probably but this isn't a private company we are talking about here. The regulations and grifting would be massive, especially in New York which is quite like California with their wastefulness: half to the garbage can, half to their pockets, maybe a cent or two for the actual rails. So maybe it'd be a few billion at least. Not to say they shouldn't try. But I expect it'll be over budget and behind sched…
I don't share your pessimism, and that's mostly because I've followed a lot more of the research into why US infrastructure costs are unreasonably high. To put it simply, excessive costs tends to come from a combination of overdesign (in particular the need to add lots of goodies to buy off stakeholders who can otherwise arrest the project), extra overhead in design costs, extra overhead in the way contracts are let, and incompetent management of contractors. But this is the sort of project that doesn't have the design stages to let that scope creep come in--it is pretty much "order off-the-shelf part number 42341 instead of 23421, then do routine maintenance tasks to replace old parts with new ones".
Re: Show HN: Trains.fyi – a live map of passenger trains in the US and Canada
#204Looking at the speed of the trains is a bit depressing. USA had so much potential to built the best high-speed railway network...
That’s what I noticed! An Amtrak train in the middle of nowhere Montana is going 49MPH…
Re: Show HN: Trains.fyi – a live map of passenger trains in the US and Canada
#205Earlier quoted context omitted.
Amtrak owns most (all?) of the NEC track between New York and Boston. Most other routes are freight train owned and Amtrak has issues. Though the freights claim the issue is Amtrak is late for their assigned times and once that happens they lose priority, if Amtrak was on time they claim that they would let Amtrak through on time. (one fright that doesn't let Amtrak through on time will cascade to being late for all…
My understanding is that the freight trains now are really long, and there's few places to pull off the tracks for such long trains, so the timetables are really tight for when trains can pass each other. This goes to what I was talking about in my initial post. Right now, part of why Amtrak is bad in the US is because we're getting pretty efficient use of the same rails for freight purposes. The ways around this wou…
Passengers and freight have different constraints and so don't mix well on rail. We should build separate rail for each. Make them compatible rail but that is for emergencies you can mix not normal operations. (2am maintenance windows count as a good reason to mix)
Don't be fooled by population density, the western states and Alaska have a lot of nothing and bring the density down. You can find overlays of France and the Midwest that have similar populations. Overall there are lots of potentially great rail routes east of the Mississippi, and along the west coast. (But of course only if you invest in local transit, otherwise everyone may as well drive as they will need their car when they get there.
Re: Show HN: Trains.fyi – a live map of passenger trains in the US and Canada
#206Re: Show HN: Trains.fyi – a live map of passenger trains in the US and Canada
#207Earlier quoted context omitted.
Many people who ride it have one of various train passes that reduce the cost, or have a plan with work that covers it. I usually use a JR pass, it's pretty expensive without it.
Unfortunately the JR pass literally doubled in price in Oct 2023, it's now 50,000 yen for 7 days and makes no sense unless you're planning to speedrun the length of Japan and back.
Yep, it is not worth it anymore. I got mine for my trip at the end of the year on literally the last day it was on sale :). End of an era.
Re: Show HN: Trains.fyi – a live map of passenger trains in the US and Canada
#208Earlier quoted context omitted.
Many people who ride it have one of various train passes that reduce the cost, or have a plan with work that covers it. I usually use a JR pass, it's pretty expensive without it.
Unfortunately the JR pass literally doubled in price in Oct 2023, it's now 50,000 yen for 7 days and makes no sense unless you're planning to speedrun the length of Japan and back.
Note that 50,000 yen is $335. So that’s a ceiling on how much you’ll spend for 7 days of Shinkansen travel.
Re: Show HN: Trains.fyi – a live map of passenger trains in the US and Canada
#209It shows the sad state of the public train system in the US. For comparison, here is a similar map for the UK:
Re: Show HN: Trains.fyi – a live map of passenger trains in the US and Canada
#210Wow, I don't know why I thought there would be... Way, way more trains active at a given time. I suppose I overestimated passenger rail popularity in this country.. I knew it wasn't relatively huge, but there's several hundred miles in some cases between trains.
The site is incomplete, and there are way, way more trains active at a given time. For instance the Tri-Rail and Brightline (high-speed rail) in Florida each have 5-6 trains running simultaneously. Brightline is notable as the US's first credible foray into high-speed rail. Similarly most major cities in the US have either light rail, rapid transit, or both, which is maybe not included in this map. "Passenger rail" m…
How is Brightline credible? It seems to be really expensive and has a high fatal accident rate.