221–230 of 316 posts
Whoa, Canada is so sad and empty
I know the Royal Hudson (BC coast, Vancouver to Whistler (at least) retired years ago and is a museum just in Squamish. I rode that one as a child, too...
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I assume it would be less about the dominance of passanger displacing freight and more about scale/distance. Germany is smaller than Texas (half the area). How often is it economical to put stuff on trains before loading them on trucks again for distances sub 1000km?
Oh sure, but the "haha the US isn't even a third world country with its train system" people already are ignoring scale/density when they're laughing at the US rail systems. I'm past even bothering dealing with that bad faith take. My curiosity is if the US has just traded off having better passenger rail for better freight rail, and if that's maybe a somewhat environmentally justified choice. How much more freight i…
https://www.trucking.org/economics-and-industry-data
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1068592/eu-road-freight-...
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The passenger rail coverage [edit: service] in most of North America is basically pathetic, for systemic reasons.
Intercity passenger rail makes little sense over most of the USA, outside the existing northeast corridor. In a sane world Amtrak would shut down most of the long-distance routes, fix the northeast corridor, and focus on gradually expanding that, but the politics of that are unattractive so it bumbles on with trains that only train nerds would ever consider actually riding on.
It has the potential to be nicer, safer, cheaper and more environmentally conscious. There's no good reason America doesn't have top tier rail transit.
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That would be a curious comparison point. I feel like every discussion of rail in the US always turns into pointing and laughing at how bad the US is at rail because it's viewed through a passenger lens, completely ignoring how much rail is used for freight. My impression is that a lot of the rest of the world has much better passenger rail, but uses freight rail quite a bit less. I wonder if part of it is due to the…
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.
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You might consider the climate and carbon impact of those flights vs rail. Many of the rail lines are subsidized in countries with extensive rail travel. So they don’t have to be economically viable, it’s viewed as a public good, contributing to general economic development.
Air travel is 2% of global CO2 emissions. Making air travel carbon neutral (by capturing carbon) would increase ticket prices by around 20%. That would be much cheaper than switching from planes to high speed rail. I'm not saying that countries with lots of rail are wrong. I'm saying that passenger high speed rail doesn't make sense in the US (at least, not outside of the northeast). We're too spread out.
Air travel is a problem when it comes to emissions because there really aren’t any viable alternatives, where as you could pretty much sub in nuclear + renewables for anything else energy/transportation wise and the math makes sense after a large investment. Knocking overland air travel out and replacing it with high speed rail cuts down a ton of air travel, and replaces it with something that is almost trivial to run on cleaner energy.
Another part of that comment you were responding to dealt with comfort and convenience, and having ridden HSR in Japan and Europe, I much prefer it to air travel. Air travel sucks and it’s only getting worse as fuel costs more. If you’re not flying business, you’re basically treated the same way livestock is treated, with a multi-hundred dollar or thousand dollar price tag to add to the insult. I’ll vote for my tax dollars going to HSR all day, “boondoggle” or not. I remember in Massachusetts the big dig was marked as such, but man has it worked. Tunnels under the city where you can drive 45 rather than elevated roads or no roads or surface streets, yep it was expensive but it’s so much better. I’m willing to bet with my tax dollars and ballot measure votes HSR will be the same.
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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.
No comparison is perfect. The best you can do is talk about both the positive and the negative so that people can understand and make the best choice for their circumstances. Price should absolutely be a part of that conversation.
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Oh sure, but the "haha the US isn't even a third world country with its train system" people already are ignoring scale/density when they're laughing at the US rail systems. I'm past even bothering dealing with that bad faith take. My curiosity is if the US has just traded off having better passenger rail for better freight rail, and if that's maybe a somewhat environmentally justified choice. How much more freight i…
Looks like 73% of freight is moved by truck in the US vs 77% in the EU. Not a big enough difference to really matter I think. https://www.trucking.org/economics-and-industry-data https://www.statista.com/statistics/1068592/eu-road-freight-...
Measured by ton-kilometers, the EU moves about 5% of freight by rail, whereas the US moves about 28% of freight by rail.
I’d kind of like real-time tracking of freight trains. There’s a BNSF grade crossing between my home and my parents’ and it would be nice to know whether I should take the 1 mile detour to get to the tunnel beneath the rail yard if there’s a train going to be blocking (I suppose it would also help to have info on the length of the trains so I’d know if the train in front of me is almost clear or if there’s another mi…