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

Amtrak's New Acela Trains Are Here. They're Moving Slower Than the Old Ones

wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 76 posts

Re: Amtrak's New Acela Trains Are Here. They're Moving Slower Than the Old Ones

#31

Post by 2OEH8eoCRo0 »

mrpopo wrote: post #22
2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people don't want trains. Most places where people want trains have them (high density places).

Trains are just the most efficient way of moving people between cities. They benefit everyone, even people with cars. You have a business trip and need to go from A to B by yourself? Take a train, it frees your brain and the highway for people traveling in groups or with lots of luggage. Incidentally it also avoids moving 2 tonnes of material for no reason.

You're preaching to the choir but the average person doesn't care.

Re: Amtrak's New Acela Trains Are Here. They're Moving Slower Than the Old Ones

#32

Post by SoftTalker »

mrpopo wrote: post #24
dc396 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, US rail is pathetic, at least for passenger travel. However, a quick search on Google Flights shows a one-way ticket from LA to DC costs $98.00 on Frontier via Atlanta (YMMV) so I don't think it's correct to say there isn't cheap, easy, high speed travel across the country.

It's also 700kg of CO2, one of the best ways to worsen climate change per dollar spent

What is it per passenger-mile, that's what you would have to compare to e.g. a car, bus, or train.

Re: Amtrak's New Acela Trains Are Here. They're Moving Slower Than the Old Ones

#33

Post by SoftTalker »

eqvinox wrote: post #14
jasonpeacock wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

New trains: padded schedule Old trains: padded schedule So really, all train schedules are padded - which makes sense, you need buffers to absorb variance in performance to have reliable schedules.

> Old trains: padded schedule No — Old trains: schedule based on experiences from having ran them for at least a year (i.e. all seasons) New trains' buffers are larger because you don't know e.g. how shit the brakes are when you have tons of leaves on your rails. (Yes this is an actual thing¹.) [¹ Ed.: in case anyone is incredulous at the leaves thing: https://www.groupe-sncf.com/en/group/behind-the-scenes/traff... ]

The contact surface area of a steel wheel on a rail is about the size of a dime. That's what you have to work with to stop the train.

Re: Amtrak's New Acela Trains Are Here. They're Moving Slower Than the Old Ones

#34

Post by craftkiller »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #9
octaane wrote: post #2

Important context buried at the bottom: "Passenger rail analysts said that it isn’t unusual for rail operators to pad their schedules when introducing new trains, especially if they will run alongside older ones. For example, during a rollout, a railroad might schedule more generous dwell time at stops, they said." Also, the new schedule is only about 15 mins longer than the old one...this is a big nothingburger.

> the new schedule is only about 15 mins longer than the old one...this is a big nothingburger Then why the new cars? Are they cheaper to run? If so, the real price of a ticket (or losses [1]) should go down. [1] https://www.amtrak.com/content/dam/projects/dotcom/english/p...

Quoting from the brief article you didn't read:

> Amtrak previously has said the new trains could potentially shave 20 minutes off the travel time between New York City and Washington, D.C., reducing the duration to around 2½ hours

> because of Amtrak’s old infrastructure, the new trains can only travel at top speed during certain portions of the journey [...] Infrastructure upgrades planned over the coming years will improve trainspeed and reliability, the railroad said.

> Each new train will hold 386 passengers, an increase of 27% compared with the current fleet.

Therefore: Faster trains carrying more people. Just not faster on day 1.

Re: Amtrak's New Acela Trains Are Here. They're Moving Slower Than the Old Ones

#35

Post by toast0 »

bobbylarrybobby wrote: post #8

US rail is so pathetic. Not the rail’s fault per se, but it's pretty embarrassing for a a supposedly wealthy country to not be able to offer its citizens cheap, easy, high speed travel across the country.

We do have cheap easy high speed travel across the country. It's just not rail.

In the US, rail is for freight. In the US, cross country distances are too large for terrestrial transport to be high speed. A flight network allows for much better speed, without needing to have continuous infrastructure.

Rail in general requires pretty specific alignment and limits on turns and slope; high speed rail has even tighter tolerances. It's very expensive to build that, especially through rocky terrain, and through existing development.

Flight networks are much more flexible. If you have room for an airport, and demand, you can get direct flights to/from anywhere. Roads are good too; because of their utility, they have a large network which tends to offer better routing than rail, and piecemeal upgades work for roads; switching routes is much easier for cars than trains, and roads can be quite rough but still usable at low speeds.

Re: Amtrak's New Acela Trains Are Here. They're Moving Slower Than the Old Ones

#36

Post by dfxm12 »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #17
bobbylarrybobby wrote: post #8

US rail is so pathetic. Not the rail’s fault per se, but it's pretty embarrassing for a a supposedly wealthy country to not be able to offer its citizens cheap, easy, high speed travel across the country.

Most people don't want trains. Most places where people want trains have them (high density places).

Most people don't want trains.

Care to flesh this out?

I can only find data that contradicts this:

https://railpassengers.org/happening-now/news/releases/new-p...

https://media.amtrak.com/2023/08/data-finds-overwhelming-sup...

Most places where people want trains have them (high density places).

This doesn't address OP's comments. To remind you, they mentioned "cheap, easy, high speed travel across the country". I would grant Amtrak is easy. It's not the other things though...

Re: Amtrak's New Acela Trains Are Here. They're Moving Slower Than the Old Ones

#37

Post by lapetitejort »

SoftTalker wrote: post #32
mrpopo wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also 700kg of CO2, one of the best ways to worsen climate change per dollar spent

What is it per passenger-mile, that's what you would have to compare to e.g. a car, bus, or train.

246g of CO2 per passenger kilometer [0]. Versus 35g for national rail

[0]: https://ourworldindata.org/travel-carbon-footprint

Re: Amtrak's New Acela Trains Are Here. They're Moving Slower Than the Old Ones

#38

Post by saubeidl »

toast0 wrote: post #35
bobbylarrybobby wrote: post #8

US rail is so pathetic. Not the rail’s fault per se, but it's pretty embarrassing for a a supposedly wealthy country to not be able to offer its citizens cheap, easy, high speed travel across the country.

We do have cheap easy high speed travel across the country. It's just not rail. In the US, rail is for freight. In the US, cross country distances are too large for terrestrial transport to be high speed. A flight network allows for much better speed, without needing to have continuous infrastructure. Rail in general requires pretty specific alignment and limits on turns and slope; high speed rail has even tighter to…

China is about the same size as the US. Here's a map of their HSR network: https://www.travelchinaguide.com/images/map/railway.jpg

Flights are nowhere near as efficient as rail, not to speak of the environmental issues.

It's factors like this that show how the US is falling behind in international competition.

Re: Amtrak's New Acela Trains Are Here. They're Moving Slower Than the Old Ones

#39

Post by saubeidl »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #10
bobbylarrybobby wrote: post #8

US rail is so pathetic. Not the rail’s fault per se, but it's pretty embarrassing for a a supposedly wealthy country to not be able to offer its citizens cheap, easy, high speed travel across the country.

> US rail is so pathetic National passenger rail. We still have the world's largest rail network [1]. It's just focussed on freight. (We also have world-class municipal and regional rail in the New York area.) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_rail_tran...

I'm not sure municipal rail in NY is quite world-class, tho it is by far the best the US has to offer.

Re: Amtrak's New Acela Trains Are Here. They're Moving Slower Than the Old Ones

#40

Post by ACCount37 »

legitster wrote: post #21
dc396 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, US rail is pathetic, at least for passenger travel. However, a quick search on Google Flights shows a one-way ticket from LA to DC costs $98.00 on Frontier via Atlanta (YMMV) so I don't think it's correct to say there isn't cheap, easy, high speed travel across the country.

It's also worth pointing out that even at TGV speeds, a coast-to-coast train ride would take ~20 hours. It would have to be sooo much cheaper than an equivalent plane ticket to be worth it.

If we price the extra travel time at the level of US minimum wage, $7.25/hr, the extra ~15 hours of travel alone would add up to a price tag of $100. And if you don't have a bullet train, then the time-economy gets even worse.

That sure seems like it explains a lot about the state of US passenger rail.

Post reply on HN