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Two-Thirds of Americans Would Utilize High-Speed Rail If It Was Available

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Re: Two-Thirds of Americans Would Utilize High-Speed Rail If It Was Available

#41

Post by tptacek »

jacques_chester wrote: post #37
ghaff wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, I prefer taking the train in the Northeast Corridor but: 1. There is a regular train from EWR right into Penn Station 2. Even though the train is more convenient in a number of ways, flying can get me from Boston into Manhattan earlier in the day than the train. Usually doesn't matter, but it may if you have a morning meeting and can't come down the previous night. 3. Although I've taken it, the Acela all…

> 1. There is a regular train from EWR right into Penn Station There is, but it runs relatively infrequently and you have to switch to the monorail, which is only faster than walking because it has a right of way. > 3. Although I've taken it, the Acela all the way from Boston to DC starts to not make sense vs. flying--and tends to cost more as well. Sure. I cheat by being the smug git in the middle. But I'd still rat…

What's "infrequently"? Has it changed recently? I used to have to DTW-NYC once or twice a week, and I always routed to EWR because I knew I'd just be a quick train trip to Manhattan. I don't remember ever waiting very long.

Re: Two-Thirds of Americans Would Utilize High-Speed Rail If It Was Available

#42

Post by mikeash »

bsbechtel wrote: post #20
mikeash wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did the streetcar line serve city hall, and did it run reasonably often at the time the meeting was set to end? Depending on the answers, there are two totally different lessons to be drawn there!

That's the issue with public transportation in the US. Cars, gas, and land are cheap, therefore personal transportation is cheaper than public transportation. When it's more affordable to drive into a city and park for free than take a train/bus and be limited to their schedules and locations, personal transportation wins every time, like in the OP's anecdote. Personally, I think this is a wonderful thing, but I also…

There are two competing issues, one is what you say, and the other is that public transportation often sucks pretty hard. Some places lean heavily one way, and some lean heavily the other way. My point is that without knowing this context, we don't know if that story is an example of "people say they want public transportation but don't actually use it" or if it's an example of "public transportation is set up badly and then the people who run it are somehow surprised when people don't use it."

Re: Two-Thirds of Americans Would Utilize High-Speed Rail If It Was Available

#43

Post by paulmd »

sandworm101 wrote: post #39

I'm always confused by the high-speed rail numbers. Exactly how many trains would it take to get 2/3 of the US population using rail? Take the average international-sized airport runway. It can land a 747 every couple minutes. That's hundreds of people every minute. A high-speed rail line cannot take even a fraction of that number. The trains cannot run at speed without significant time/distance between them. That's…

It all depends on the capacity of the train and how frequently it stops. Starting and stopping are the real killers since you need extra spacing (or very long "onramps") to accelerate and decelerate a train.

However, one concept is a train that never needs to start and stop. Passengers move onto a separate car that separates from the main train and can decelerate into the station, and then it reaccelerates and attaches to the next train. Conceptually, this allows you to run much larger trains since you don't need to decelerate it every 10 minutes for a stop.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIeRrU4_M3Q

This is the original concept. Let's just say I have some doubts about the feasibility of engineering that design in real life, but the concept of detaching cars seems sound to me. Conceptually I do like the idea of the detachable cars being a different type of unit with a higher top speed and better acceleration/deceleration units to assist in the deceleration and overtaking steps.

A simpler implementation would be to have self-propelled carriages that combine motors and passenger space, and have the car accelerate and decelerate on a siding. The main train would have to run at a slower speed than the detached car could achieve in order for it to "catch up" but could then accelerate back to top speed once reattached. This would lead to an "oscillating" pattern of distance between multiple trains on the line.

Also, at the end of the day a runway is still a "one-dimensional" unit of capacity in the same way that a rail line is. You can have multiple multiple runways or rail lines (which I guess is "two-dimensional" in your definition here) but you certainly can't have multiple decks of runways or land multiple airplanes on top of each other. It's actually perfectly feasible to have rail lines running at multiple depths, many subway stations do it.

Re: Two-Thirds of Americans Would Utilize High-Speed Rail If It Was Available

#44

Post by mikeash »

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #14
rmason wrote: post #5

My father told me a story about discontinuing a street car line (called an interurban) in a town North of Detroit. There was a hearing at city hall and hundreds of villagers turned out. Dozens of people made the case to keep the line. Finally the street car company's lawyer got up and made the business case for discontinuing the line. He concluded by asking the crowd how many of you used our company's street car to g…

>It's easy to tell a pollster you're for high speed rail but how many will actually buy a ticket? Perhaps they should ask for them to prepay for a ticket? I use the MBTA on a fairly frequent basis. I would use it every day if biking didn't half my commute time. I've also used Megabus to visit New York City, for day trips even, Acela for an interview in New York once, and a short domestic air flight to visit a friend…

Acela isn't "high-speed" rail, it's basically normal rail with high-speed hardware which occasionally goes fast enough to barely clear the threshold for calling it "high speed."

Acela averages less than 70MPH. In a proper high-speed system that would be more like 180MPH. Boston to DC would be 2.5 hours, vastly faster than flying once you account for airport nonsense.

Re: Two-Thirds of Americans Would Utilize High-Speed Rail If It Was Available

#45

Post by goatforce5 »

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #14
rmason wrote: post #5

My father told me a story about discontinuing a street car line (called an interurban) in a town North of Detroit. There was a hearing at city hall and hundreds of villagers turned out. Dozens of people made the case to keep the line. Finally the street car company's lawyer got up and made the business case for discontinuing the line. He concluded by asking the crowd how many of you used our company's street car to g…

>It's easy to tell a pollster you're for high speed rail but how many will actually buy a ticket? Perhaps they should ask for them to prepay for a ticket? I use the MBTA on a fairly frequent basis. I would use it every day if biking didn't half my commute time. I've also used Megabus to visit New York City, for day trips even, Acela for an interview in New York once, and a short domestic air flight to visit a friend…

> cost $450 for a 1 hour, 15 minute flight

Remember to allow time for getting to/from the airports (which typically are a bit of a trek from downtown areas), allowing time to check in and clear security.

Re: Two-Thirds of Americans Would Utilize High-Speed Rail If It Was Available

#46

Post by mikeash »

sandworm101 wrote: post #39

I'm always confused by the high-speed rail numbers. Exactly how many trains would it take to get 2/3 of the US population using rail? Take the average international-sized airport runway. It can land a 747 every couple minutes. That's hundreds of people every minute. A high-speed rail line cannot take even a fraction of that number. The trains cannot run at speed without significant time/distance between them. That's…

A Shinkansen line (arbitrarily chosen because it was the first thing that popped up in my search) can do 13 trains per hour with 1,323 passengers per train, which is equivalent to one 747 every 1.4 minutes.

Re: Two-Thirds of Americans Would Utilize High-Speed Rail If It Was Available

#47

Post by sandworm101 »

paulmd wrote: post #43
sandworm101 wrote: post #39

I'm always confused by the high-speed rail numbers. Exactly how many trains would it take to get 2/3 of the US population using rail? Take the average international-sized airport runway. It can land a 747 every couple minutes. That's hundreds of people every minute. A high-speed rail line cannot take even a fraction of that number. The trains cannot run at speed without significant time/distance between them. That's…

It all depends on the capacity of the train and how frequently it stops. Starting and stopping are the real killers since you need extra spacing (or very long "onramps") to accelerate and decelerate a train. However, one concept is a train that never needs to start and stop. Passengers move onto a separate car that separates from the main train and can decelerate into the station, and then it reaccelerates and attach…

The runway is one-dimensional, but aircraft still move in 3d. That means planes can be closer (in time) behind each other. Trains must leave room enough to stop. Planes can escape by diverting higher/lower/left/right. So planes stacked up on approach to a runway can safely be far closer together than trains on approach to a station.

Non-stopping trains are interesting, but such a solution would require the multiple parallel lines I mentioned above. And even the non-stopping trains would need some amount of space between them for emergency stopping and speed changes.

Re: Two-Thirds of Americans Would Utilize High-Speed Rail If It Was Available

#48

Post by mikeash »

wahsd wrote: post #33

It really kind of fascinates me why people are so obsessed with rail and high speed rail. What are the emotional reasons for it, because there are no rational and reasonable arguments for it that can't be refuted. It makes absolutely no sense and strikes me as another one of those examples of obsessive thoughts and ideal people have these days. It's like all the shitty education we subjected people of roughly <35 yea…

High-speed rail is the best way to travel intermediate distances, say 200-1000 miles. In this realm, it's faster than air travel overall (because you have much less security nonsense and getting to the train station is much faster than getting to the airport) and it's far more comfortable.

I must know, how do you refute that?

Re: Two-Thirds of Americans Would Utilize High-Speed Rail If It Was Available

#50

Post by takno »

ghaff wrote: post #27
eli_gottlieb wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right. Having train travel target business travelers who are neither price-sensitive nor particularly time-sensitive is a choice -- a political choice. For instance, when we say that buses "can take advantage of a a road network that already exists and that they don't need to maintain (other than whatever taxes they pay)", that doesn't mean the infrastructure doesn't need to be paid-for, it means someone other than t…

>and then act surprised that nobody takes Amtrak But lots of people take Amtrak in the Northeast Corridor--enough to subsidize the rest of the system. The problem is that there aren't any other areas in the country that are as well-suited for busy inter-city rail as the Boston to DC corridor. Almost everything else is lower density and further apart. I'm not an expert on transportation cost structures but my observat…

Given that buses usually don't beat rail in speed terms, and are usually less environmentally friendly, the only real reason for buses to exist is price. If they can't beat rail on that they simply won't run.
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