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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?

#51

Post by dahart »

melling wrote: post #35
Robotbeat wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 2…

Sadly our 1000 mile trips currently take ~24 hours rather than the 5-6 that it could. Multiple factors for that: slow trains; long stops; cargo rail gets priority over passenger rail.

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

#52

Post by mnd999 »

majewsky wrote: post #33
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 fr…

I’m now looking at whether you can get to Paris and Brussels within 5 hours from the village of Wendover in the UK.

And yes, you can.

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

#54

Post by rr888 »

cbm-vic-20 wrote: post #37
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 ho…

> How far can you get to by train from Paris in 70 hours?

NYC->LA is about the same as Paris->Moscow and that takes nearly 3 days as well. Paris Instanbul is similar distance which is a little quicker but still over 2 days.

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

#55

Post by avianlyric »

rr888 wrote: post #27
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 used to think this too, now I live here the American system actually works pretty well. Railways are actually very busy with freight, which keeps it off the roads and freight doesn't mind pauses and running overnight. Lots of rural connections are much easier to drive. Even between cities its easier because for train connections you'd have to get to the station (usually central) where if you drive you can go direct…

This does make the fundamental assumption that train travel and driving are equal from a users perspective.

Train travel has the advantage of not needing to do the driving. You can spend that travel time doing something productive, rather than staring at tarmac. Additionally train travel is potentially more accessible (assuming proper investment in infrastructure). The obvious example being that blind people are never going drive anywhere, regardless of how “mobile” it makes them.

While your point about being close to train stations has some validity. For the vast majority of European urban, and sub-urban areas, a fast train connection is only 20-30mins away via local public transport. So living “close” in terms of time, doesn’t require you to be physically close to the train station.

Finally high-speed rail, is really fast. Up to 200mph fast, well over double what’s realistically safe in a private car. So while the train might not be direct, it’s going that much faster, you can still get to your destination quicker than a car.

To provide some context, many Amtrak lines are limited to 80mph, and only a small number can achieve Amtraks top speeds of 150mph. That’s ignoring the frequent delays due to track congestion and freight priority, which results in even slower average speeds. It’s not a surprise that trains look unappealing to many Americans, when the average US passenger train can only just keep up with a passenger car.

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

#56

Post by secretsatan »

ejb999 wrote: post #45
OJFord wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>>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. That is the problem in my opinion - I prefer sitting on a train, to sitting on a plane, but for most routes I need to travel (within the US) it takes longer to get there and is more expensive than flying - why would anyone want to pay more…

The more rail improves the more I'm tempted to take it, with flying you have the additional time cost of just dealing with the airports, turn up an hour early, then get put in the metal tube where they won't serve you drink till they're up in the air, and you can't bring your own.

A train may take longer sometimes, but I find the whole thing much less stressful, you're not strapped to the seat, you have leg room, even a table, power sockets, bring your own food and drink, and the prices are competitive.

It still takes longer than I'd like to get from Switzerland to the UK, and that's mostly due to a lengthy change in Paris.

I think in France, and prob other countries too, their moving to ban domestic flights that can be done on rail instead

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

#57

Post by woodruffw »

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 agree that we should let density and demand drive construction of HSR.

That being said, there are plenty of plausible HSR routes in the US. We're a very sparsely populated country in our middle, but there's effectively a "string" of large cities right through our middle: NYC - Pittsburgh - Columbus - {Cincinnati, Indianapolis} - {Louisville, St. Louis} - Kansas City - Oklahoma City - Albuquerque - {Phoenix, Tucson} - Los Angeles.

All of the legs there should under 400 miles, and most should be under 200. There's also plenty of room for adjustment: Louisville - Nashville - Memphis - Dallas and then onward south, for example.

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

#58

Post by ben-schaaf »

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).

Swizerland (SBB) has some nice data on this with 98.9% connection punctuality, 40% of connections <5min and 77% under 10min. Though they might be an outlier here given the integrated timetable.

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

#59

Post by nowahe »

phreeza wrote: post #25

So which starting point covers the largest number of people you can reach? I am guessing Brussels since it covers a good portion of the Blue Banana, plus Paris and other big French cities. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Banana

(Semi)surprisingly, Strasbourg looks like a good contender as well, as it covers a good portion of the blue banana, most of Germany, and about half of France

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

#60

Post by chrisfinazzo »

dahart wrote: post #51
melling wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 2…

Sadly our 1000 mile trips currently take ~24 hours rather than the 5-6 that it could. Multiple factors for that: slow trains; long stops; cargo rail gets priority over passenger rail.

Yep.

Even the fastest trains Amtrak offers ("Acela") are zoned - or permitted, not sure what the right term is here - up to 150 MPH, and only on specific portions of the route.

Makes no sense at all.

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