Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Show HN: Trains.fyi – a live map of passenger trains in the US and Canada

trains.fyi

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 316 posts

Re: Show HN: Trains.fyi – a live map of passenger trains in the US and Canada

#211

Post by chroma »

MarkMarine wrote: post #189
chroma wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't say anything about roads, but it's not true that roads are unprofitable. Roads are paid for by fuel taxes and vehicle registration fees. California's gas taxes raise $8 billion per year. The state's registration and licensing fees collect another $12 billion per year. The state spends $18 billion per year on Caltrans, meaning that vehicles provide $2 billion in revenue for other state programs. BART takes 30…

You might consider the climate and carbon impact of those flights vs rail. Many of the rail lines are subsidized in countries with extensive rail travel. So they don’t have to be economically viable, it’s viewed as a public good, contributing to general economic development.

Air travel is 2% of global CO2 emissions. Making air travel carbon neutral (by capturing carbon) would increase ticket prices by around 20%. That would be much cheaper than switching from planes to high speed rail.

I'm not saying that countries with lots of rail are wrong. I'm saying that passenger high speed rail doesn't make sense in the US (at least, not outside of the northeast). We're too spread out.

Re: Show HN: Trains.fyi – a live map of passenger trains in the US and Canada

#213

Post by CryptoBanker »

ecshafer wrote: post #69

This is cool, but you are missing NJ Transit which has passenger trains separate from LIRR and Metro North. You are also missing Septa and MTA internal city light rail and subway lines, which are technically passenger trains.

Which MTA light rail lines are you referring to? Last I heard construction hasn’t yet started on the first one.

Re: Show HN: Trains.fyi – a live map of passenger trains in the US and Canada

#214

Post by chroma »

resolutebat wrote: post #196
chroma wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't say anything about roads, but it's not true that roads are unprofitable. Roads are paid for by fuel taxes and vehicle registration fees. California's gas taxes raise $8 billion per year. The state's registration and licensing fees collect another $12 billion per year. The state spends $18 billion per year on Caltrans, meaning that vehicles provide $2 billion in revenue for other state programs. BART takes 30…

So in your best case scenario, it's taken you 2.5 hours to get to LAX, how long from there to LA itself? What if you checked bags and need to wait for them to show up? (Not a thing on trains, just take your suitcase with you.) Also, your best case scenario of 1 hour from SF to plane is hysterically optimistic. BART headways are 20 minutes in theory and often delayed in practice. If you have bags to check, that'll che…

I've never gotten to an airport two hours ahead of my flight, not even for international travel. For a short, frequent flight like SFO-LAX, I arrive at the airport 15 minutes before boarding starts. I'm not at all worried about missing my flight. Worst case I'll get on the next flight.

The reason I didn't add travel time from LAX to Union Station is because LA is incredibly spread out and most destinations are not downtown. To get to where you want to go in LA, you'll need a car.

And don't forget that this is a comparison of a trip you can take today versus a hypothetical train that will cost you several times more. In real life the train is unlikely to run as frequently or to be as fast as claimed. Honestly, I'm not sure if anyone will ever take high speed rail from SF to LA. The current plan is to finish Merced to Bakersfield some time between 2030 and 2033. Will the political willpower to continue the project still exist a decade from now? I don't know.

We can go back and forth arguing about which is faster all day long, but the real problem is the finances of CA HSR. I've yet to see any figures that show it being financially competitive with air travel. Is the plan to increase taxes on everyone to subsidize ticket prices? Considering the clientele of high speed rail, that seems rather regressive.

What would change your mind about this? I'd be in favor of CA HSR if costs were significantly lower. (I naively assumed government competence when I voted for prop 1A.) It looks like that's not an option, so the best course of action is to stop wasting money on this boondoggle.

Re: Show HN: Trains.fyi – a live map of passenger trains in the US and Canada

#215

Post by bpye »

tacostakohashi wrote: post #71
kylecazar wrote: post #27

Wow, I don't know why I thought there would be... Way, way more trains active at a given time. I suppose I overestimated passenger rail popularity in this country.. I knew it wasn't relatively huge, but there's several hundred miles in some cases between trains.

Outside the northeast corridor and a few others, there are many Amtrak trains are only once a day, or less, and often with long routes. It's unfortunate. The network is pretty good in terms of coverage / states covered on the map (since it's optimized for that), but lots of places it's pretty much impractical to use because the one time/day doesn't work. I really wish they could at least get to a minimum of two train…

Yep, I really like the train from Vancouver to Seattle but you get two trains each direction each day, one in the morning and one in the evening. Because of how long the trip takes it doesn’t really work as a day trip sadly - you’d be spending as long on the train as you would at your destination.

Re: Show HN: Trains.fyi – a live map of passenger trains in the US and Canada

#216

Post by bpye »

FalconSensei wrote: post #212

Whoa, Canada is so sad and empty

It does look like this is missing the West Coast Express in the Lower Mainland - but that’s strictly a commuter service with a number of trains into Vancouver in the morning, and out of Vancouver in the evening.

Re: Show HN: Trains.fyi – a live map of passenger trains in the US and Canada

#217

Post by alisonatwork »

thomasahle wrote: post #3

I didn't know there was a trans-Canadian railroad. Did anyone try it?

I took Via east to west a while back. It takes a few days, but just like Amtrak the regular seats are more spacious and comfortable than airplane seats so it's not too bad. No internet most of the way, so you better have some books or something to entertain yourself. The food is terrible because of course it is. Bring snacks. The train also stops for a couple hours in Winnipeg which has lots of places to get a good feed.

The scenery is pretty great, especially through northern Ontario where it feels like you are traveling through an alien planet where the only thing that exists are rocks, trees and eerie, pitch-black pools of liquid that you could imagine isn't water. You fall asleep at night then wake up the next morning and the view out the window is exactly the same. It's wild.

Crossing the Rockies isn't really worth it if you're only going for the views, imo. Lots of tourists get on the train at Jasper, but I imagine they'll be disappointed because the epic vistas are fleeting and most of the time your line of sight is blocked by trees, cliffs or tunnels. Unlike the route out of Denver on Amtrak, you don't get an awesome desert on the other side either.

Either way, the main point is that it's pretty much the only way to get from one side of Canada to the other if you don't want to use a plane or zig-zag through the US. Greyhound is gone, STC is gone, stringing together a bus route with a hodge podge of local operators is tough and in some places just leads you back up to Via anyway. If you're lucky enough to live along the CN line then Via is all there is, and it's better than nothing at all, which is the situation for a huge chunk of rural Canada.

Re: Show HN: Trains.fyi – a live map of passenger trains in the US and Canada

#218

Post by rgmerk »

ska wrote: post #30
kylecazar wrote: post #27

Wow, I don't know why I thought there would be... Way, way more trains active at a given time. I suppose I overestimated passenger rail popularity in this country.. I knew it wasn't relatively huge, but there's several hundred miles in some cases between trains.

The passenger rail coverage [edit: service] in most of North America is basically pathetic, for systemic reasons.

Intercity passenger rail makes little sense over most of the USA, outside the existing northeast corridor.

In a sane world Amtrak would shut down most of the long-distance routes, fix the northeast corridor, and focus on gradually expanding that, but the politics of that are unattractive so it bumbles on with trains that only train nerds would ever consider actually riding on.

Re: Show HN: Trains.fyi – a live map of passenger trains in the US and Canada

#219

Post by bpye »

TheArcane wrote: post #54
Symbiote wrote: post #44

Similar for Great Britain: https://www.map.signalbox.io/

Looks like there are more non-metro trains currently running in London, than in all of Canada & US

That seems believable - the UK saw 390 million passenger rail journeys in the last quarter [0]. Amtrak saw just under 23 million in all of FY22 [1]. That’s before accounting for the UK having a population around 1/5 that of the US.

[0] - https://dataportal.orr.gov.uk/statistics/usage/passenger-rai...

[1] - https://www.amtrak.com/content/dam/projects/dotcom/english/p...

Re: Show HN: Trains.fyi – a live map of passenger trains in the US and Canada

#220

Post by dfc »

vzaliva wrote: post #209

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.
Post reply on HN