261–270 of 316 posts
I love these maps. Here is one from Switzerland: https://maps.vasile.ch/transit-sbb/ , just a tad bit busier than the US
(although it also includes some buses and ferries, and you can only look at one region at a time)
Congrats on the launch! Very nice project. Do you have any estimation of what percentage of passenger train traffic is currently displayed vs. still to be implemented? As others have mentioned, I also was little bit surprised of the (small?) amount of trains on the map. Similar map for Finnish trains: https://www.vr.fi/en/live-train-tracker-map
Here's the map for Belgium btw https://trainmap.belgiantrain.be/
It shows the sad state of the public train system in the US. For comparison, here is a similar map for the UK: https://www.map.signalbox.io/
When I look at the map for UK I see far fewer trains than the map for the US. Am I missing something? I thought maybe it was because you posted earlier in the day, but your comment was posted around 0100 UTC--not that long ago. I do not think we have the best public rail system in the US but if all o had to go on was how many trains there were on each map I might think differently.
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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…
No faster than it already is, I would think. The experience is SO much nicer than taking an airplane that a little extra time is worth it. Don't forget how much time is wasted in airplanes just getting to and from the airports and waiting for security checks and sitting on the tarmac waiting to taxi. Trains travel directly between city centers with almost no waiting time.
The Acela doesn't really need to be much faster, though it'd be nice; it just needs to be cheaper and more frequent.
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Assuming this is all true, what then makes the Japanese Shinkansen economically viable?
They already have the land rights, favorable social environment for construction, more compliant population, less local/more federal legal zoning and land use power, more federal level direction to get things done, higher rate of engineers in population. That CA is bad at all of those makes it expensive and hard In addition to very low competence levels in gov't compared to Japan due to many factors. Sure Japan has f…
Nitpick: this part isn't correct. There's no federal legal zoning or direction or anything federal at all. Japan doesn't have a federal government; like most countries, it has a unitary government. The US is unusual this way, along with Germany and Russia.
But otherwise, you're right. It's much easier to build stuff here for all those reasons.
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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.
"Fair" depends on what you're using it for. Parking at airports can be expensive, but parking at Tokyo or Kyoto station is more so. The stations themselves are more confusing and less well-signposted than an airport. And if you want to take oversize luggage (e.g. a surfboard) that's a moderately priced upgrade on a plane but completely impossible on the Tokaido Shinkansen. No comparison is perfect. The best you can d…
That's just dumb. No one actually drives to these stations; that's what public transit is for. At worst, people might take a taxi.
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If it's ok to see real time location of planes and cargo ships, how come it wouldn't be ok for trains?
way more attack surface?
I love these maps. Here is one from Switzerland: https://maps.vasile.ch/transit-sbb/ , just a tad bit busier than the US
https://rasp.yandex.ru/map/trains/#center=37.63999999999997%... Yandex has it for (mostly Russian) trains that it has on schedule.