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Stable 1.2 Gigabit/s Internet achieved in moving train in Switzerland

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Re: Stable 1.2 Gigabit/s Internet achieved in moving train in Switzerland

#211

Post by throw0101a »

SnowProblem wrote: post #132
singhrac wrote: post #4

I would honestly pay significantly higher taxes if we could get Swiss-quality train service in parts of the US (and especially if they have good internet). When I traveled Boston to NY in the past, compare my flight experience vs Amtrak. Flight: - Take $25 Uber to airport and get there 1 hour early to go through security and wait. - Fly to JFK (1h 20m) - land, wait to get off, go through terminal again, then take $50…

I think if you want a high-quality train service, you should pay for it through higher fares. Saying you would pay higher taxes is sly language for saying you want to others to subsidize you.

> Saying you would pay higher taxes is sly language for saying you want to others to subsidize you.

And per the IMF there are huge subsidies to fossil fuels in the US:

* https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/fossil-f...

I think if you want to pollute the air and cause climate change, you should pay for it without those of us who use public transit subsidizing it.

Re: Stable 1.2 Gigabit/s Internet achieved in moving train in Switzerland

#212

Post by jeffbee »

ajmurmann wrote: post #191
_-___________-_ wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not sure that it’s the sprawl either. Many European cities with large suburban areas around them and nearby smaller towns that have effectively become part of them (e.g. Milano) have frequent local/regional rail service out to all the suburbs and associated towns.

I wonder if US sprawl is still structurally different from European sprawl. In Europe even suburban areas seem more likely to have a small mixed-user core on which residents can easily walk to a train stop. The US seems to frequently deter that with zoning dividing residential and commercial areas

You either arrange your town so everyone can walk to the rail station, or you end up with Los Angeles. My favorite example is the Swiss city Chur. This negligibly-populated, irrelevant little town, which is 4% the size of San Francisco, has a 12-track rail station that is much better than the one that San Francisco plans to have by 2050. And, of course, the trains come constantly. In the next hour Bahnhof Chur will enjoy the arrival of 13 trains, and that's their pre-dawn service!

Re: Stable 1.2 Gigabit/s Internet achieved in moving train in Switzerland

#213

Post by hansvm »

ashtonkem wrote: post #206
hansvm wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would prefer every road to be a toll road and get rid of the general taxes that used to go to roads Off-topic I know, but I'd only like to see this if the tolls were reasonable with respect to the maintenance of the affected stretches of road. $0.50 per car per mile more than pays off a typical 4-lane interstate in a year, yet tolls are often an order of magnitude larger and drawn out for 20+ years.

A fair toll road system would basically ban semi trucks, since they’re the ones that do the overwhelming majority of the damage.

That's an interesting idea. I wonder how workable it would be to automate tolling based on axle weight.

Re: Stable 1.2 Gigabit/s Internet achieved in moving train in Switzerland

#214

Post by jeffbee »

sgustard wrote: post #120
wpdev_63 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main problem with the US interstate train system is that it's run on freight train lines. Amtrak and Acela do not actually own the railway they use and they can only go a certain speed due to the grade of the track. I don't think you would be willing to pay the amount of taxes you would need to, to completely redo the railways haha. Anyways Amtrak are barely turning a profit as it is and while it would be great t…

The US is willing to run at a $3T deficit so the concept of needing tax money or fiscal viability to build things is tenuous at best. Did taxpayers get slammed when we built the transcontinental RR?

The US government gave railroad companies 175 million acres of free land, 10% of the nation (ex. Alaska), to get those railroads built. It was an incredibly costly endeavor.

Re: Stable 1.2 Gigabit/s Internet achieved in moving train in Switzerland

#215

Post by umeshunni »

pansinghkoder wrote: post #49
whimsicalism wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For anywhere further than Boston -> NY, the flight is considerably cheaper though.

SF-LA SF-Sacramento SF-Tahoe SF-Napa SEA-PDX Austin-Dallas-Houston LA-Las Vegas-Phoenix-Tucson And I am not talking snail Amtrak 70 mph train. I am suggesting 150 mph that runs in most Europe. What is holding US back in public transport?

This is a good read on what goes wrong when trying to build HSR in the US:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_California_High-S...

Re: Stable 1.2 Gigabit/s Internet achieved in moving train in Switzerland

#216

Post by mandada »

snarkypixel wrote: post #19

Just as a fun thought experiment, what /new/ things could be possible if we had 1Terabit/s?

From the web development perspective, the network is no longer the bottleneck; its CPU processing power. Doesn’t matter how fast your website comes if it’s shove full of trackers and ads that mobile CPU can’t handle.

Put another way, what’s the point of downloading a terabyte of data in seconds when it takes your computer minutes to process it into something useful? Also, where are we storing all this data that we can download at super fast speeds? Most computers cap out at around 8 GB of RAM (though this does seem to be trending upwards) and SSDs read/write speeds are measured in megabytes (with most capping out at single digit gigabytes) so with terabit we are potentially downloading more data than computers can physically store per second.

Reducing latency though would be the real game changer. When Starlink finishes building out it’s fleet, we could see worldwide latency drop to he point that video games would no longer need to have regional game servers because of lag! But then the problem becomes “how to do you manage all those players on one server”? Annnd we’re back to our CPU limitations.

Re: Stable 1.2 Gigabit/s Internet achieved in moving train in Switzerland

#217

Post by whyenot »

Erik816 wrote: post #181
_AzMoo wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's about priorities. Swiss defense spending as a percentage of GDP is 0.675%. US defense spending as a percentage of GDP is 3.2%. I just picked a simple example, but you will find similar disparities across the board.

And part of US Defense spending helps defend countries like Switzerland. Maybe we still spend too much, but we also "defend" a lot more countries than ourselves, and a lot more territory than Switzerland.

Switzerland is a neutral country and not part of NATO. The US has no obligation to defend them. Almost every adult male Swiss citizen has received military training. The country may not spend as much as the US, but Swiss citizens are willing to pay for their freedom in a different way.

(..and yes, only men are conscripted. Switzerland is a great country, but there continue to be problems with sexism, even today)

Re: Stable 1.2 Gigabit/s Internet achieved in moving train in Switzerland

#218

Post by dcolkitt »

singhrac wrote: post #4

I would honestly pay significantly higher taxes if we could get Swiss-quality train service in parts of the US (and especially if they have good internet). When I traveled Boston to NY in the past, compare my flight experience vs Amtrak. Flight: - Take $25 Uber to airport and get there 1 hour early to go through security and wait. - Fly to JFK (1h 20m) - land, wait to get off, go through terminal again, then take $50…

None of the disadvantages you cite are intrinsically related to flying. We don't have to build huge railways, just remove the arbitrary barriers that make air travel suck. The biggest one being the ridiculous security theatre that is the TSA.

Commercial flight, even with the risk of terrorism, is far safer than land travel. If it's acceptable to let people board the Acela without going through body scanners, then there's no reason we can't do the same with JetBlue.

Re: Stable 1.2 Gigabit/s Internet achieved in moving train in Switzerland

#220

Post by Gibbon1 »

pansinghkoder wrote: post #49
whimsicalism wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For anywhere further than Boston -> NY, the flight is considerably cheaper though.

SF-LA SF-Sacramento SF-Tahoe SF-Napa SEA-PDX Austin-Dallas-Houston LA-Las Vegas-Phoenix-Tucson And I am not talking snail Amtrak 70 mph train. I am suggesting 150 mph that runs in most Europe. What is holding US back in public transport?

> What is holding US back in public transport?

Ideology.

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