Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Show HN: Trains.fyi – a live map of passenger trains in the US and Canada

trains.fyi

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 316 posts

Re: Show HN: Trains.fyi – a live map of passenger trains in the US and Canada

#141

Post by brandall10 »

nilsbunger wrote: post #116

It's sad that even great potential routes like SF->LA aren't accessible by train, and we don't seem to have the state capacity to build HSR there. I was just in Japan, and took the Shinkansen from Tokyo to Kyoto, which is a similar distance as SF to LA. That train: - runs every 10 minutes -- if you miss one, just take the next one! - takes 2.5 hours travel time - starts and ends in city centers on both ends. - has be…

I just spent the summer traveling Europe, visited 17 cities where 14 were by rail. 3 were day trips.

Got so used to how easy it it to literally walk into a station and be on a train in a few minutes that I almost missed Turin->Paris when a tram to the station was five minutes behind schedule. Average connection was 5 hours of travel time, but factoring in getting to/from the airport, early arrival, etc, it was mostly a wash in any time saved. All in all, total cost for transport was about $900 (not including going/coming back from Europe, which obviously exceeded that).

Re: Show HN: Trains.fyi – a live map of passenger trains in the US and Canada

#142

Post by gosub100 »

ska wrote: post #30
kylecazar wrote: post #27

Wow, I don't know why I thought there would be... Way, way more trains active at a given time. I suppose I overestimated passenger rail popularity in this country.. I knew it wasn't relatively huge, but there's several hundred miles in some cases between trains.

The passenger rail coverage [edit: service] in most of North America is basically pathetic, for systemic reasons.

> systemic

you misspelled "union"

Re: Show HN: Trains.fyi – a live map of passenger trains in the US and Canada

#143

Post by noirbot »

achileas wrote: post #117
jantissler wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is actually a problem in Germany that high-speed trains too often share tracks with slower passenger and freight trains. Other countries like Japan put their high-speed trains on completely separate tracks.

This is also a problem with IIRC the Acela and other Amtrak routes between Boston and New York, and probably on other routes too.

It's arguably the problem with any attempt at high speed rail in the US. Or even low-speed passenger rail. There's so much freight moving on the rails that there's just not much slack in the system for things not running on time.

As the parent says, the solution would be to add dedicated high-speed rails, but then you loop back to the US density issues. How fast would the Acela have to be for it to justify the price you'd have to charge to ever come close to paying back the cost to add a whole dedicated train line between Boston and Washington DC?

Re: Show HN: Trains.fyi – a live map of passenger trains in the US and Canada

#144

Post by eldaisfish »

lmm wrote: post #129
nilsbunger wrote: post #116

It's sad that even great potential routes like SF->LA aren't accessible by train, and we don't seem to have the state capacity to build HSR there. I was just in Japan, and took the Shinkansen from Tokyo to Kyoto, which is a similar distance as SF to LA. That train: - runs every 10 minutes -- if you miss one, just take the next one! - takes 2.5 hours travel time - starts and ends in city centers on both ends. - has be…

I like the Shinkansen but it's also very expensive - that journey is ¥14,170 one way, and the discounts for return tickets or advance booking are vanishingly small. Even with the incredibly weak yen I can see same-day SF-LA flights cheaper than that.

Do your flight costs include parking, the costs of getting to and from the airports, the value of your time, the mental hassle of airport security theatre, the costs of additional luggage and so on?

If not, it’s not a fair comparison.

Re: Show HN: Trains.fyi – a live map of passenger trains in the US and Canada

#145

Post by CitrusFruits »

lmm wrote: post #129
nilsbunger wrote: post #116

It's sad that even great potential routes like SF->LA aren't accessible by train, and we don't seem to have the state capacity to build HSR there. I was just in Japan, and took the Shinkansen from Tokyo to Kyoto, which is a similar distance as SF to LA. That train: - runs every 10 minutes -- if you miss one, just take the next one! - takes 2.5 hours travel time - starts and ends in city centers on both ends. - has be…

I like the Shinkansen but it's also very expensive - that journey is ¥14,170 one way, and the discounts for return tickets or advance booking are vanishingly small. Even with the incredibly weak yen I can see same-day SF-LA flights cheaper than that.

Tickets from SFO to LAX can be cheaper, but that's usually not for optimal times. Sure you can get a round trip ticket for $80, but you'll be leaving at 6 in the morning or something like that. Additionally, you'll have to go through security, not be able to bring your own beverage (or water), sit on a much smaller seat, and not have Wi-Fi.

In other words, I think $95 one way on an extremely punctual bullet train with high availability is a steal.

Re: Show HN: Trains.fyi – a live map of passenger trains in the US and Canada

#146

Post by ska »

gosub100 wrote: post #142
ska wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The passenger rail coverage [edit: service] in most of North America is basically pathetic, for systemic reasons.

> systemic you misspelled "union"

If it were that simple, it would be much easier to fix.

Re: Show HN: Trains.fyi – a live map of passenger trains in the US and Canada

#147

Post by threeio »

tacostakohashi wrote: post #71
kylecazar wrote: post #27

Wow, I don't know why I thought there would be... Way, way more trains active at a given time. I suppose I overestimated passenger rail popularity in this country.. I knew it wasn't relatively huge, but there's several hundred miles in some cases between trains.

Outside the northeast corridor and a few others, there are many Amtrak trains are only once a day, or less, and often with long routes. It's unfortunate. The network is pretty good in terms of coverage / states covered on the map (since it's optimized for that), but lots of places it's pretty much impractical to use because the one time/day doesn't work. I really wish they could at least get to a minimum of two train…

Isn't that mostly based on the fact that they share rail time? Its not like these tracks are unused in the other periods of time, they're just not Amtrak trains.

Re: Show HN: Trains.fyi – a live map of passenger trains in the US and Canada

#148

Post by solaarphunk »

condiment wrote: post #45
kylecazar wrote: post #27

Wow, I don't know why I thought there would be... Way, way more trains active at a given time. I suppose I overestimated passenger rail popularity in this country.. I knew it wasn't relatively huge, but there's several hundred miles in some cases between trains.

The site is incomplete, and there are way, way more trains active at a given time. For instance the Tri-Rail and Brightline (high-speed rail) in Florida each have 5-6 trains running simultaneously. Brightline is notable as the US's first credible foray into high-speed rail. Similarly most major cities in the US have either light rail, rapid transit, or both, which is maybe not included in this map. "Passenger rail" m…

Bright line isn’t HSR. The average speed is something like 65mph

Re: Show HN: Trains.fyi – a live map of passenger trains in the US and Canada

#149

Post by noirbot »

bluGill wrote: post #140
achileas wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is also a problem with IIRC the Acela and other Amtrak routes between Boston and New York, and probably on other routes too.

Amtrak owns most (all?) of the NEC track between New York and Boston. Most other routes are freight train owned and Amtrak has issues. Though the freights claim the issue is Amtrak is late for their assigned times and once that happens they lose priority, if Amtrak was on time they claim that they would let Amtrak through on time. (one fright that doesn't let Amtrak through on time will cascade to being late for all…

My understanding is that the freight trains now are really long, and there's few places to pull off the tracks for such long trains, so the timetables are really tight for when trains can pass each other.

This goes to what I was talking about in my initial post. Right now, part of why Amtrak is bad in the US is because we're getting pretty efficient use of the same rails for freight purposes. The ways around this would either be to somehow legally force freight to fully be lower priority than passenger, which presumably raises prices/lowers efficiency of freight on the rails or to build a mostly disjoint system of rails for passenger only.

The costs required to build a passenger only system is high and the density of the US makes me question if it would get the use needed to be viable. In the meantime then, is it net positive for the US to prioritize freight use over passenger? Even if we gave passenger traffic maximum priority, would it defer enough flights to offset the freight efficiency losses?

Re: Show HN: Trains.fyi – a live map of passenger trains in the US and Canada

#150

Post by jcranmer »

bluGill wrote: post #139
jcranmer wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Acela does the same trip in 3.5 hours. I just rode it last week, and it actually took 3 hours, not 3.5. Most of the NEC corridor from DC to NYC has a speed limit of 125mph; from NYC to New Haven, it's generally 70mph (!), from New Haven thence to about Kingston generally 90mph, and from there to Boston it's mostly 150mph. Given the density of the corridor, Amtrak should be trying for 150-220mph speed limits, but ev…

https://pedestrianobservations.com/2023/11/24/curves-in-fast... is a good analysis for anyone who doesn't want to believe jcranmer or wants more detail. (what I linked is a second best approach, but it links to other low hanging fruit like switches)

And the first link in that post goes to https://pedestrianobservations.com/2019/02/08/fix-the-slowes..., which more directly speaks about the impact of slow speeds in station throats.
Post reply on HN