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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?

#251

Post by Gwypaas »

madcaptenor wrote: post #198
Gwypaas wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not? The great advantage of high speed rail is that with intermediate stops along the route you can service smaller cities which previously, or as you just did, would be considered flyover country. Thus making the value of the system greater than just the end terminuses. Just looking at the towns between Portland and Sacramento Salem, Eugene and Medford exist. Neither would themselves ever be valuable enough for…

I'm sure they bring some value but my understanding is they don't bring enough value. But I could be wrong!

Here's a good video on one method of calculating what the sum of the smaller individual parts would be. This is for the north east corridor but the same thinking applies to any rail project.

It seems like about a million people live there, not nearly enough individually, and trains would likely alternate at which locations they stop to bring the total travel time between the larger areas down.

Might be hindered by the mountainous terrain though making the cost prohibitive.

"U.S. High Speed Rail: What's Next? Analyzing Extensions and Expansions, and What Makes Sense"

https://youtu.be/zxiGY8p2rCo

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

#252

Post by twelvechairs »

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 ...

Metropolitan france is 54% larger than Germany so its not a fair comparison

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

#254

Post by embedded_hiker »

Gwypaas wrote: post #189
madcaptenor wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right. You don't want a line down the entire West Coast, even though it's tempting to draw. But a line from Vancouver to Portland makes sense, as does a "greater California" system - roughly lines from Los Angeles to SF, Sacramento, Vegas, San Diego. The latter is basically the California HSR system that's under construction, plus the proposed privately built line from LA to Vegas. (Levy also proposes LA to Phoenix;…

Why not? The great advantage of high speed rail is that with intermediate stops along the route you can service smaller cities which previously, or as you just did, would be considered flyover country. Thus making the value of the system greater than just the end terminuses. Just looking at the towns between Portland and Sacramento Salem, Eugene and Medford exist. Neither would themselves ever be valuable enough for…

South of Eugene and north of Redding, the land is mountainous and would be extremely difficult to build a straight enough line to serve as HSR. The existing Amtrak Cascades service goes between Eugene and Vancouver BC.

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

#256

Post by KronisLV »

> This map shows you how far you can travel from each station in Europe in less than 5 hours.

Aww, seems like Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia aren't a part of Europe, then.

But jokes aside, the visualization itself is pretty cool, though it might also be really useful to be able to put emphasis on the actual train tracks, especially in the further zoom levels, though map implementations don't always allow this to be done easily, without too much customization or running your own tile server.

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

#257

Post by throwaway0a5e »

tomjakubowski wrote: post #238
throwaway0a5e wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Easy to complain on the internet. Hard to change a hard left into a sweeping arc in the middle of New Haven. Even ignoring the money, if you try and do a project like that you are going to get slapped in the face by all the same "cutting apart muh neighborhood" rhetoric that gets used against highways. Grade separation and "just paying those people to go away" are both expensive enough to be non-starters.

Highways and rail create different kinds of disruption in neighborhoods. Highways constantly have traffic, creating noise and pollution all the time. Railroads are mostly quiet, with loud traffic in short bursts. Passenger railroads are narrower than urban highways. The US-101 freeway cuts through Echo Park and Westlake in Los Angeles, taking up as much as 330 feet of width, counting on/off ramps. California HSR has…

I have no love for highway pits but to play if off like an HSR pit is some quaint little light rail is simply farcical.

You're being dishonest or ignorant. The fact that you compare max-width of one to min-width of the other rules out one option. A pit is a pit. You're limited to crossing at a few specific points no matter how narrow it is and traveling to those points accounts for the bulk of the distance covered. The physical width only matters if you're evaluating the neighborhood for visual appeal and not actual livability. "Quiet most of the time" doesn't really count for much because people acclimate to the background noise levels and that one train per hour is just as jarring as that one motorcycle with the insane exhaust per hour. At least with subways and airports it's every couple minutes so you get more used to it.

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

#258

Post by labcomputer »

eloisant wrote: post #197
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…

We're not talking about doing NYC - SF by train, but there are a lot of places where it makes sense. As I used to live in the Bay Area, it really surprised me that there was no bullet train between San Francisco and Los Angeles. Yes, apparently it's planned but it boggles my mind that they waited so much before building it. Americans don't realize how much nicer train is compared to plane for medium distances (up to…

> Yes, apparently it's planned but it boggles my mind that they waited so much before building it.

Basically because there are only 2-3 places you can practically cross the mountains surrounding LA (Tehachapi Tejon, and the coast), and 3-4 places you can do the same for the SFBA. All of them are already occupied by existing rail or roads.

Those mountain crossings cost more that the rest of the system combined.

> get in the train 10 minutes before departure without check-in or security, no waiting 15 minutes on the tarmac before disembarking... I guarantee you the door-to-door time is going to be lower.

I wish, but you're wrong and it's not even close. (SFO, OAK or SJC) to (LAX, BUR, LGB or ONT) is about 45 minutes gate to gate. Add 5 minutes for security[], 25 minutes boarding, 15 minutes deplaning and you're at 1h30 curb to curb (vs. the almost 3 hours station to station that CAHSR claims* they will provide when finished).

The plane is faster even accounting for travel time to and from the station or airport. The contrast is especially stark if your destination is not downtown LA.

[*] TSA with PreCheck has gotten really fast in the past couple years. They no longer scan your boarding pass (just your ID + a database of the day's travelers). You don't need to unpack your bag, remove your shoes, nor remove your jacket. On a dozen trips in the past year, security has never taken me more than 5 minutes. It takes almost as long to walk through the maze of ropes forming the queue as the actual security procedure itself.

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

#259

Post by kitkat_new »

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).

doesn't this assume that trains constantly leave the station?

In reality there is a train e.g. every hour or so, or even none at the same day

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

#260

Post by wbsss4412 »

bluGill wrote: post #211
wbsss4412 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Cost of the train is $42 (coach) each way. Cost of gasoline would be ~ $24 each way. The cost of driving is more than just the cost of gasoline.

Not if you already own the car. Then the cost of the car and insurance are sunk costs that do not count. Sure there is a little wear and tear, but that adds just a couple bucks. If you buy a car/rent for that trip alone, then the cost of driving is far higher. However for most Americans the cost of a car is a sunk cost that cannot be counted. If you live someplace where it is possible to live without a car, then you…

The resale value of the car, insurance (even if you don’t do pay per mile, insurance quotes are generally going to have some basis in miles driven per year), and maintenance are all directly correlated with miles driven. So, while these are often treated as sunk costs, that is due to improper accounting.

So, to reiterate, the cost of driving is much more than the cost of gas.

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