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No mention of China. They built 16,000 miles of high-speed rail in 15 years. They’ll be at 24,000 miles by 2025. The low/medium speed maglevs also seem interesting: https://gbtimes.com/china-tests-new-generation-of-maglev-tra... A 70-100 mph maglev would be useful in a few large cities.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Such as?
The US has the best rail system in the world...and uses it to transport cargo. The US also has the biggest single-country economy in the world.
No mention of China. They built 16,000 miles of high-speed rail in 15 years. They’ll be at 24,000 miles by 2025. The low/medium speed maglevs also seem interesting: https://gbtimes.com/china-tests-new-generation-of-maglev-tra... A 70-100 mph maglev would be useful in a few large cities.
Same goes for diesel trucks / busses. This type of change throughout the world would really improve people’s lives immediately.
Cycling is cleaner than any of them. So what?
Once again, Americans are "discovering" things other civilized countries knew and implemented for a long time :)
This is rather obvious and has always been a major advantage of rail. The problem is the capital costs and real estate requirements of building the rail lines, especially when locations are far apart and there's already existing infrastructure that needs attention.
I don't think distance is a relevant factor: train tracks cost about the same as a two-lane highway while having higher capacity. Stations are fairly expensive, but when locations are far apart that's not a significant factor.
The bigger problem is that you can't profitably service low-demand routes with trains. Trains excel on high-demand routes but when you only want to move 20 people per hour a road has much lower operating costs.
No mention of China. They built 16,000 miles of high-speed rail in 15 years. They’ll be at 24,000 miles by 2025. The low/medium speed maglevs also seem interesting: https://gbtimes.com/china-tests-new-generation-of-maglev-tra... A 70-100 mph maglev would be useful in a few large cities.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19549466
[2] https://www.ft.com/content/ca28f58a-955d-11e8-b747-fb1e803ee...
Roads are obviously worse but I’m not sure about airplanes. They’re measuring energy per passenger/km but I think ignoring the cost of building the infrastructure (the “get data” link is down). For roads and railways infrastructure investments are huge, both initial construction and then maintenance. Not only in dollars, in CO2 as well.