131–140 of 297 posts
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> The cost of the line can't be justified unless it provides a viable alternative to flying between SF and LA, I have no trouble imagining that the train can compete with flying between SF and LA. Even if the train has to stop in several backwater towns along the way. The shuttle flights between SFO/SJC and LAX are completely unreliable. When I was doing the SF-LA haul regularly, I'd be delayed (delayed!) by 6+ hours…
That assumption is: plane with current on-time arrival percentage vs train with mythical 100% on-time arrival. There are a whole host of additional problems that affect rail travel that you never have to think about with air-travel. Currently, Amtrak OTA is 80% - so that means 1/5 of your trips will experience a delay of some sort.
Of course OTA % doesn't account for the size of the miss and I've heard plenty of stories of long distance trains sitting for hours while multi-mile long freights go by.
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That assumption is: plane with current on-time arrival percentage vs train with mythical 100% on-time arrival. There are a whole host of additional problems that affect rail travel that you never have to think about with air-travel. Currently, Amtrak OTA is 80% - so that means 1/5 of your trips will experience a delay of some sort.
I assumed that the Northeast Corridor (which I believe is the only place where Amtrak actually makes any money) would be much different from other routes but that actually isn't the case. Acela is better than the long distance routes but not by a huge amount. Of course OTA % doesn't account for the size of the miss and I've heard plenty of stories of long distance trains sitting for hours while multi-mile long freigh…
Several times I've been on the Downeaster headed to Boston and gotten shunted onto sidings, to the point that we got an hour behind schedule.
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> since those who want to go direct between SF and LA will always have a direct flight as an option Therein lies the problem. The cost of the line can't be justified unless it provides a viable alternative to flying between SF and LA, because that's the only conceivable way to get enough ridership. The problem is the distance between SF and LA means being competitive with flying in terms of travel time is incredibly…
NYC to Boston is 230 miles, about 3.5 hours by "fast" train. It's about an hour flight. A lot of people still take the train. If you can get the trains to take you directly into the city center, it can often be a better option.
That means I leave for the airport 75 minutes before my flight, fly for 1 hour, arrive in JFK/LGA/EWR, and then take about 30-40 minutes of public transit to my destination in Manhattan. And that's the ideal.
There's some break-even point for travelers between the more relaxed pace of train travel as opposed to the efficiency of air travel, but BOS - NYC is still within the realm of the train, even at Amtrak speeds.
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Have you ever ridden a train in Europe or Japan? They are far and away the most comfortable way to travel any distance under 500 miles.
For short distances high-speed rail can be a good option, particularly in connecting neighboring cities (LA-SF, etc). The problems with all these projects are cost: Simple back of envelope calculations show it to be (a) dubious, or (b) possibly criminal (ie. standard taxpayer ripoff to cronies). $64B - do the quick math on that. Figure a 30 year return on investment earning 4% per year: $2.2B payback per year + opera…
I agree that seems pretty dubious. Why on earth is infrastructure so expensive in the US?
$64B just in startup costs, for a slower trip than flying. Why this infatuation with a technology that hasn't been leading edge since the 1800s?
Have you ever ridden a train in Europe or Japan? They are far and away the most comfortable way to travel any distance under 500 miles.
Today, as I go to whip that out as a counterexample, I see that Thalys would make a whole lot of sense vs. flying for me (though I don't know how door-to-door costs would compare).
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Have you ever ridden a train in Europe or Japan? They are far and away the most comfortable way to travel any distance under 500 miles.
Europe or Japan were nice, but China was amazing. No pre-paid ticket, no planning just show up at the Shenzen train station the morning, arrive in Beijing in the evening on the other size of the country.[1] Imagine freedom, the innovation, the improvement in quality of life if we could hop on a train in the morning NYC and arrive in SF at night for ~$100. I found the trains so much more comfortable than even flying f…
Forget high speed rail, where's the commuter trains? It seems ridiculous that in most US cities public transit is mostly non-existent. Traffic is bad in most major US cities you'd think people would be jumping for this as urbanization increases.
It doesn't work if you don't have that central density & transit. It doesn't generally work in the opposite direction either. (Urban dwellers to suburban jobs.)
For extra fun, realize that California had already begun about the same time as Japan to install more public transport, but the car companies moved muscle on them to stop it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_consp...
If I had known that they were going to run this through the Central Valley instead of down the coast where it belongs I never would have voted for it. It should have gone straight from la to Oakland or emeryville, turned and gone straight to Sacramento. Instead we have a convoluted mess of rail connections that take people places they don't even want to go (no offense to Bakersfield buts it's hardly a holiday destina…
Another potential concern is that it runs through some good farmland, which CA has some of the best of in the world. I would love to have an HSR along the coast however. When I was in Taiwan it was amazing being able to get to the bottom of the island in a couple hours.
Is that a joke? California is a terrible place to be farming. Farming in California is only viable because farmers are allowed unfettered access to water, depriving it from residents (who are told they should turn off the water in the shower while farmers are pouring untold millions of gallons on crops that could be grown somewhere actually suited to farming).