111–120 of 128 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The issue is that we are enabling people to travel long distances too cheaply.
And above all too quickly . Per kilometer, flying is roughly as polluting as driving, but nobody would think to drive across a continent to go to the beach.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The issue is that we are enabling people to travel long distances too cheaply.
What about short distances? Why is it cheaper to fly Berlin-Stuttgart than to take a train? it makes absoutely no sense.
The single best thing you can do to drive down train cost is to put more people on each train.
Based on these sources: https://www.statista.com/chart/20169/gb-rail-fare-spending-b...
https://transport.ec.europa.eu/document/download/f5c82d86-23...
The new Airbus Project Sunrise aircraft also set the record for longest passenger aircraft flight
Just looked that up. Good lord, they need to amend the universal declaration of human rights to include flying people 24 hours straight in coach as a violation.
The downside is that it doesn't scale beyond the biggest city pairs: you'd need N^2 direct flights vs 2N flights via a hub.
Yes let's continue burning fuel. It's fine.
Flying is a bit unique in that there aren't really viable alternatives. It also accounts for a fairly small portion of emissions. Land transport (cars and trucks), power generation, and heating are where the big wins exist with viable alternatives.
A lot of
Yes let's continue burning fuel. It's fine.
Flying is a bit unique in that there aren't really viable alternatives. It also accounts for a fairly small portion of emissions. Land transport (cars and trucks), power generation, and heating are where the big wins exist with viable alternatives.
A lot if not most airplane traffic is holiday related, and only a handful of rich people actually get to enjoy it. There's no need for it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I guess if you are really serious about saving the planet from airplanes, you could start a network of similar-feeling folks and begin randomly bombing enough flights to terrify the world into not flying. Give yourself an edgy name, like the Children of Kali, to make it stick. Honestly, if you think the stakes are that high then you implicate yourself with anything but fully committed action. Anything less, and you j…
That is a terrible way to get the necessary support for climate action and would be actively harmful to the cause. This argument has been made so often and in so much detail that I’m surprised to still see people suggest climate terrorism in, presumably, good faith.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Flying is a bit unique in that there aren't really viable alternatives. It also accounts for a fairly small portion of emissions. Land transport (cars and trucks), power generation, and heating are where the big wins exist with viable alternatives.
There are plenty of alternatives. Most importantly: traveling locally. Nobody needs to visit 30 countries by 30 years old or whatever dumb social media excuses they have. Air travel is a very recent modern invention(1960s, at least for everyday folk) and people act like flying around the world is a right. Modern capitalism is an excess machine and it'll feed us constant excuses for why our reasons are valid. Air trav…
I have a highly specialized skill set that require me to be at site.
What am I supposed to do, no longer go home?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What?? In Europe there are lots of viable alternatives. Same as Asia!!
Even if some high speed rail existed in the US, do you think it is practical to go from California to Maine? If you are going 2,500 miles on a train that is going 150 miles an hour it would take you 16 hours assuming there are no stops. Obviously there are going to be stops so your trip is going to be an entire day. I think a lot of people do not understand just how massive the US is.
The thing is, a high speed corridor enabling that trip would, as you note, involve many stops of which each pairing represents another potential flight that the same train might replace. Many of those pairings will be short enough flights that a proper high speed rail corridor would easily compete with if not destroy the short-haul flight offerings.
To use your example, it looks like there are currently two flights between California and Maine, both run weekly by United between PWM and either LAX or SFO flying east on Saturday mornings and returning west on Sunday morning. A hypothetical high speed rail corridor connecting coast-to-coast between either of those city pairs might not replace a lot of flights across the whole country but one train running along that full route might have replaced one from Portland to Buffalo, another from Boston to Columbus, another from Cleveland to St. Louis, et cetera.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Track utilisation is limited by a number of factors, including headways, much of which is governed by stopping distance. I believe a general minimum practical headway allows about 10--12 trainsets per hour on a given track. At 400 passengers/trainset, that's roughly 4,000 to 4,800 passengers/hour, per track. That compares with about 1,500 vehicles/hour per highway lane, or about 2,550 passengers/hour at the U.S. aver…
Some urban subways have 30 second headways.
The New York subway has a top speed of 55 mph (88 kmh), but an average speed of 17.8 mph (28 kmh). I'm not sure what downtown intra-station peaks are, but suspect they're low on shorter sections. The London Underground is similar, with an average of 33 kmh (20 mph), max ~100 kmh (60 mph). This varies considerably by lines, the Bakerloo stock peaks at 45 mph; the Circle line averages just 24 kmh (15 mph). Chicago's 'L' is similar to NYC: max 55 mph, average ~20--25 mph.[3]
Note that averages include acceleration, deceleration, and dwell times (standing still at stations). But central portions of subways probably achieve low headways with relatively low peak speeds for congested track segments.
Notes:
________________________________
1. https://parkingday.org/how-fast-do-new-york-subway-trains-tr...>
2. https://tubenotifications.co.uk/insights/how-fast-is-the-tub...>
3. https://parkingday.org/how-fast-does-the-subway-go-in-chicag...>