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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?

#141

Post by madcaptenor »

madcaptenor wrote: post #128
wbsss4412 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The center of population in the US is still just barely to the west of the Mississippi, whenever people point out how vast and largely empty the US is, the leave out that the population itself is actually generally fairly close together for a majority of the country. You could easily have HSR all over the south, Midwest and NE, and then between population centers on the west coast, just likely not in the desert and w…

See for example Alon Levy's map of proposed HSR for the Eastern United States: https://pedestrianobservations.com/2019/02/10/high-speed-rai... They've actually done serious investigation of what's viable given typical costs and ridership of high-speed lines elsewhere in the world. The high-speed bits they propose are basically a Boston-Atlanta-Chicago triangle with some ornaments (Chicago - KC, Chicago - Minneapolis,…

or Levy's 2021 version for the whole US and adjacent bits of Canada: https://pedestrianobservations.com/2021/03/22/high-speed-rai... , which follows

They did the math and decided to connect Florida to the main Eastern component (based on there being enough demand for Atlanta-Florida travel), so there are four components - the main Eastern component, Texas, California (+Vegas, Phoenix), Pacific Northwest (Portland to Vancouver)

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

#142

Post by mastercheif »

qalmakka wrote: post #22

As a European it boggles my mind seeing how trains are basically non-existent in the USA (just look at Houston station), given how dominant the whole "Wild West" railroad rush is in everybody's immagination. Railroads are super ubiquitous here, and we've to work with a pretty hostile terrain - Italy has lots of mountains, hills, rivers, and yet has one of the best networks in the world. Most of the USA are basically…

To go against the grain somewhat, I think distance is an overrated factor in regard to its impact in preventing US passenger rail adoption.

I think the most overlooked factor is poor intra-city transit and lack of mixed use density in our city cores.

I recently traveled to Germany on business, a few nights in Berlin then took the ICE inter-city train to Munich.

The ICE train dropped me off at the main station in Munich—my hotel was 7.3 miles driving from the main station. I was able to jump on the u-bahn and with a quick transfer at Odeonsplatz get to my hotel in half-an-hour including a 10 minute walk from the train station.

Door to door from Berlin to the hotel in Munich was 05:00 hours. If one were to drive, maps says 361mi/580km traveled if driving direct with a drive time of 05:30.

For comparisons sake, let's take a hypothetical trip from Dallas Union Station to Apple's engineering headquarters in Austin, TX 14.7mi/24.6km from the Austin train station.

According to Apple Maps, taking public transit would take 09:00 hours. Driving direct from Dallas Union Station to Apple HQ in Austin is 187mi/300km in total with a drive time of 03:00.

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

#143

Post by reddog »

qalmakka wrote: post #22

As a European it boggles my mind seeing how trains are basically non-existent in the USA (just look at Houston station), given how dominant the whole "Wild West" railroad rush is in everybody's immagination. Railroads are super ubiquitous here, and we've to work with a pretty hostile terrain - Italy has lots of mountains, hills, rivers, and yet has one of the best networks in the world. Most of the USA are basically…

Actually the US has the worlds most efficient train system: https://www.masterresource.org/railroads/us-most-advanced-ra...

For long hauls, we use our RRs to move freight and airlines to move people. By traveling at 600mph instead of 60mph (the speed of most European train travel - intercity high speed rail is rare and expensive) I can get to anyplace in the continental US in under 5 hours from my home in Austin.

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

#144

Post by OJFord »

jrockway wrote: post #109
chrisfinazzo wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really have a preference, but having done my first couple flights in close to 20 years in the past 3 months, I was struck by how much has changed in that time. PreCheck and Global Entry weren't around when we went to Bermuda in August 2001. It was a trip notable not only for its proximity to 9/11 - by chance, my bag was searched either before we left L.F Wade in St. George's or on arrival back in Newark, but…

They've been trying to implement passport control before boarding the train between NYC and Montreal for a while, but nothing seems to have come of it. It was an Obama-era priority. I haven't taken that train in many years, but they basically stop the train at the border and immigration agents board and check everyone's passport. It's scheduled to take 2 hours. Really stupid. It's a 45 minute flight, and you go throu…

That's crazy. Perhaps a good comparison is the channel tunnel, e.g. going from London to Paris you go through security similar (a bit less onerous) to that at an airport before boarding.

That was the case even with the UK in the EU (maybe it's not any less onerous than an airport now actually, idk) but otherwise intra-EU over land is not an issue, almost necessarily. (But then, you might think that about Canada/US.)

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

#145

Post by patrick91 »

pahn wrote: post #134

I made an interactive art installation on this question once: A black box with a knob where you could adjust how much time you have, then it would offer you (Google streetview) panoramas of the locations it found within your distance, and in the end even print a paper slip with your travel itinerary to take with you. The installation used realtime data (Google directions API): I somehow figured out, that if I would r…

that's a pretty cool project!

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

#146

Post by dr_dshiv »

geraldwhen wrote: post #99
dr_dshiv wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that means the modern USA misses out on the inherent benefits of density. This is a weird counter rational behavior— it is in everyone’s perceived best interest to live in big separate homes, but the collective social economic benefit of living together is evident. Also evident is how sprawl sucks vitality from culture.

No thank you. I live near enough howling dogs. I will never forget the peace and quiet when I stepped into my first house. Why anyone lives in apartments by choice is beyond me. The noise is absurd.

Noise? My kids make noise. With that, the difference between a house and an apartment is negligible. I love living in a nice city. Ultra convenient.

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

#147

Post by scythe »

Robotbeat wrote: post #26
qalmakka wrote: post #22

As a European it boggles my mind seeing how trains are basically non-existent in the USA (just look at Houston station), given how dominant the whole "Wild West" railroad rush is in everybody's immagination. Railroads are super ubiquitous here, and we've to work with a pretty hostile terrain - Italy has lots of mountains, hills, rivers, and yet has one of the best networks in the world. Most of the USA are basically…

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…

> the cost to build a HSR route to go between population centers is super high

The cost is high, but more painfully, the cost per-mile is higher than for the same distance of railroad in Europe or East Asia. That's not a result of pure geography.

Also, while the cost is high, it's not actually that large in comparison to the overall DoT budget, which is projected at $142B for FY2023. You could build a lot of train for that. Political will is a much more important factor. We just dropped $40B on the Current War without blinking.

Even so, this misses another key step: intercity rail in Europe usually connects seamlessly to metro rail, which is what makes it so easy and nice to use. But the cities themselves in the United States do not usually have rail systems to connect to. That's why the best near-term rail corridor IMHO is NY-Buffalo (subway) - Youngstown (possible Pittsburgh metro extension) - Cleveland (subway) - Toledo (possible Detroit metro extension) - Chicago, connecting to six subway systems.

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

#148

Post by klohto »

nisa wrote: post #95
klohto wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We all have neglected the networks while claiming to have “the biggest rail network”. Well, now it’s the slowest, and probably the most underfunded. The missing connection to South Germany don’t make sense though. Just take a train to Berlin and take DB anywhere.

> The missing connection to South Germany don’t make sense though. Just take a train to Berlin and take OBB anywhere. It's the difference between 6-8h and 2-3h to reach a city in Czech Republic. However the tracks connecting Germany/Czech Republic in the south are not in good shape if I remember that correctly.

Sure, but the problem is on the Czech part. Once you're in Germany, it's pretty fast.

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

#149

Post by Milner08 »

reddog wrote: post #143
qalmakka wrote: post #22

As a European it boggles my mind seeing how trains are basically non-existent in the USA (just look at Houston station), given how dominant the whole "Wild West" railroad rush is in everybody's immagination. Railroads are super ubiquitous here, and we've to work with a pretty hostile terrain - Italy has lots of mountains, hills, rivers, and yet has one of the best networks in the world. Most of the USA are basically…

Actually the US has the worlds most efficient train system: https://www.masterresource.org/railroads/us-most-advanced-ra... For long hauls, we use our RRs to move freight and airlines to move people. By traveling at 600mph instead of 60mph (the speed of most European train travel - intercity high speed rail is rare and expensive) I can get to anyplace in the continental US in under 5 hours from my home in Austin.

Intercity trains often go much faster than 60mph. More like an average of 90mph with a speed limit 125mph on the main lines in UK. Thats not even the HS1 (and eventually HS2), that's on our old AF Victorian rail roads.

The argument for trains is often more about taking out the need to drive everywhere than the need to fly from coast to coast though, as a train is never going to beat that.

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