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How far can you go by train in 5h?

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Re: How far can you go by train in 5h?

#31

Post by OJFord »

Robotbeat wrote: post #26
qalmakka wrote: post #22

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…

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…

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.

Re: How far can you go by train in 5h?

#32

Post by js2 »

qalmakka wrote: post #22

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…

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).

Re: How far can you go by train in 5h?

#33

Post by majewsky »

stratom wrote: post #8

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.

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.

Re: How far can you go by train in 5h?

#34

Post by OJFord »

maeln wrote: post #18

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 ...

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 à Londres ;))

Re: How far can you go by train in 5h?

#35

Post by melling »

Robotbeat wrote: post #26
qalmakka wrote: post #22

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…

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…

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.

Re: How far can you go by train in 5h?

#36

Post by CPLX »

qalmakka wrote: post #22

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…

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.

Re: How far can you go by train in 5h?

#37

Post by cbm-vic-20 »

qalmakka wrote: post #22

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…

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?

Re: How far can you go by train in 5h?

#38

Post by majewsky »

nicoburns wrote: post #10
kitkat_new wrote: post #5

sadly it isn't using real transfer times I supposed it would be much worse in Germany if real data was used

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).

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.

Re: How far can you go by train in 5h?

#40

Post by PopAlongKid »

qalmakka wrote: post #22

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…

> 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.

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