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And San Francisco is struggling to add 1 mile of underground track. The project is postponed (again) to open in 2022.
Be careful comparing a system which can simply take the land and labor it wants to one in which people have rights.
Be careful making excuses that don't apply.
So, as someone that lived in New York for 6 years and California for 6 years, stories like this are incredibly depressing. The US is the world's largest economy and should be the shining example of amazing infrastructure, high-tech, green cities, and forward thinking policies. California is an especially egregious example in terms of infrastructure investment: If California was a country it would be the world's fifth…
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>Infrastructure is easy (and cheap) when you don't have to respect property rights or do environmental impact studies. Is there no national/public interest exception in the constitution just for such cases? Where you take someone land buy you pay or give equivalent land back(I know some people would like to get rich quick in this situations)
In the US? There is, but it's not always politically popular, and fair market value is required, which gets expensive when tearing down buildings and moving highways in Urban areas. The bigger obstacle is the environmental impact study, which includes a social justice component. That keeps you from using the cheapest routes, as cheap land usually means it disproportionately affects minorities.
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Depressing?!? It’s incredibly exciting! The United States wasn’t going to build these. Americans have been making excuses since the 1970s. Jerry Brown tried to build the CA bullet train 4 decades ago. Electric cars, electric buses, bullet trains, low-speed maglevs, high speed maglevs... China is making it happen! In America, all we want is “drill, baby, drill”
> Jerry Brown tried to build the CA bullet train 4 decades ago. Amusing to me he did the Rip Van Winkle and popped up as Governor again after 30 years. In office he pushed hard to get CHSR built. Every time California's high speed rails come up on HN it's obvious that everyone here hates the idea. So the US is getting what it's collectively asking for and deserves here.
California's major cities are almost in a line along the coast. That's the route that makes sense.
California's HSR instead took a tour through the Central Valley's farming communities, taking a slam dunk pitch for linking San Francisco and San Diego via L.A. and turning it into a carcass.
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American here. Public transportation is seen as inconvenient and for lower class people, so large transit projects like this get no traction. You will never see executives or politicians taking trains to work like you do in European countries. Except in NYC.
Other, and actually main, reason is that good public transport decreases cost of land, it is basically designed to do so: it makes more places liveable/jobs reachable, so there is effectively more land for the same amount of people. So everyone will vote against or they lose their pensions. Want to fix this? Sure, easy, just scrap the democracy and just don't ask people, send those who object, to "re-education" camps…
I'm just going to assume that you've never been to major Asian cities.
So, as someone that lived in New York for 6 years and California for 6 years, stories like this are incredibly depressing. The US is the world's largest economy and should be the shining example of amazing infrastructure, high-tech, green cities, and forward thinking policies. California is an especially egregious example in terms of infrastructure investment: If California was a country it would be the world's fifth…
Currently living in California, and I feel the main opposition to things like this are the constituents. Everyone in the Central Valley will simply vote against whatever California wants to spend money on unless if overwhelmingly benefits them, or “hurts” those in the cities. I know this isn’t the only reason the high speed rail project was canned, but those in the Centra Valley opposed it unless it connected some st…
Why would they support being essentially left behind?
If they can get vacuum tubes working cost effectively that would be amazing, no limit to max speeds then. I doubt they are practical currently. Low pressure Helium Oxygen mixture probably a better option, just enough Oxygen for humans to survive and enough Helium, for say 1/3 atmosphere pressure, would be far easier and cheaper to build/maintain and would still dramatically reduce friction/drag.
Isn't helium potentially in short supply? https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/helium-smartphones-fibre-op... Pressurizing train tunnels with significant amounts of helium which would constantly need to replenished may be impractical
So, as someone that lived in New York for 6 years and California for 6 years, stories like this are incredibly depressing. The US is the world's largest economy and should be the shining example of amazing infrastructure, high-tech, green cities, and forward thinking policies. California is an especially egregious example in terms of infrastructure investment: If California was a country it would be the world's fifth…
I’m under the impression that the US public want cars not trains and even the current tech celebrity’s vision is to have self driving cars that work together as if they are train carriages and go in a tunnel as if they are metro train carriages. In the rest of the world, people are fine with ride sharing.
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I understand this for inside a city, using a car is more pleas sent then sharing a bus or metro with strangers but when you travel a long distance you use a plane so all the comfort is gone, it would be better to have a high speed train , you still share it with strangers but if you are rich you can afford better accommodations including beds, you can walk and stretch your legs and there may even be spots for smokers…
> using a car is more pleas sent then sharing a bus or metro with strangers Not when it means you're stuck in a traffic jam. In a big city I'd take decent metro system over a car any day.
I’m not sure if it’s just lost in translation, but Wuhan to Guangzhou isn’t even 1000 km so I don’t know where they get the 2200 km they’re quoting. That’s likely a figure for GZ to Beijing. I have used the high speed line between Wuhan and GZ (and through to HK) several times. It’s currently a 4.5 hour direct journey (once per day) or a 5 hour journey if you change at GZ or Shenzhen. The HSR is 300ish km/h at the mo…
That's the big one. What HSR needs is not even higher top speed but some control breakthrough that allows much higher train frequencies in order to cut down on stops via more trains that can serve more specialized connections (e.g. the local/through etc). No idea what that breakthrough might be, perhaps something as crazy as rocket-assisted emergency braking.