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China laying tracks for 1,000km/h maglev trains

asiatimes.com

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Re: China laying tracks for 1,000km/h maglev trains

#341

Post by haberman »

saberience wrote: post #28

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…

My friend Zach Shaner wrote a really interesting article called "ST3 is Slow Because It Reflects Our Values." ST3 is a transit project in Seattle.

https://seattletransitblog.com/2016/04/07/st3-is-slow-becaus...

Re: China laying tracks for 1,000km/h maglev trains

#342

Post by justinzollars »

briandear wrote: post #69
justinzollars wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are amazing. There is one in Shanghai that connects the airport to the city. Imagine a ride from SFO to Salesforce tower in 7 minutes.

That use case is perfect for Maglev. Essentially replace Caltrain.

^ This guy has an imagination! This is what I like to see on HN. positive about technology. Thank you.

Re: China laying tracks for 1,000km/h maglev trains

#344

Post by simonebrunozzi »

saberience wrote: post #28

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…

The irony of a train called "bullet train" (San Francisco Bay Area) when it goes at an average of 30-35 mph.

Re: China laying tracks for 1,000km/h maglev trains

#345

Post by mcny »

Boondox543 wrote: post #297
chao- wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with your sentiments overall, so don't take my "it's not all gloom and doom" comment as a disagreement... But there are people out there trying! The project from Texas Central Railways is looking like a sooner bet than California's line, for a number of reasons. An example of a reason is lower price, stemming from geography. The route doesn't require building tunnels through mountains and the like. Although e…

I travel from Dallas to Houston every week for work and have been following this closely. Often after a run of crummy trips by air due to delays and other common air travel issues I take an executive charter bus just to take a break. All the while dreaming of what it would be like transiting via maglev at 1kmph

> 1kmph

Did you mean a thousand miles per hour? Dallas to Houston is under 300 miles so a thousand miles per hour would make the commute about eighteen minutes? But then, 1k miles per hour is 447.04 meters per second while speed of sound is about 343 meters per second so I don't know if that technology yet exists...

At a thousand kilometers per hour, even including about fifteen minutes of speeding up and slowing down time, a train from Dallas to Houston shouldn't take more than an hour. It would be awesome.

Speaking of dreaming, Google says Miami to Seattle is about 48 h (3,303.3 mi) driving via I-90 W. Lets round it up to 6000 kilometers to avoid sharp turns. A non-stop train at 1000 kmph would be a six hour train ride, down from a forty eight hour drive.

Imagine a train on this route, full of quiet cars on this route.

Re: China laying tracks for 1,000km/h maglev trains

#346

Post by reddog »

gwright wrote: post #308
usaar333 wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Been to China many times actually. I wouldn't call Shanghai sprawl in the American sense. Yes it is huge, but what matters is that driving isn't a quick way to get around the city (there are no quick ways to get around the city, just like NYC) so you don't end up needing a car to live or travel. Agreed though that the Acela cooridor is the most reasonable place for the US to invest in high speed rail

I commute by train to New Haven on the same tracks that Acela uses. The existing track corridor in New England is not appropriate for true high-speed train service. That really requires new right-of-ways, which would be extremely expensive in the Northeast. There are currently plans for the next version of Acela but it is more about replacing aging equipment than any true speed upgrade. The Acela trains are almost 20…

Great comment. I would add that back in the 30's everyone was swooning over Hitlers autobahns. It's incredible what can be accomplished when you don't have a pesky democracy getting in your way.

Re: China laying tracks for 1,000km/h maglev trains

#347

Post by jfim »

ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #281
nikofeyn wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A major problem with train systems in the United States (and this is both short and long haul) is that almost the entire country is sprawl - built around the automobile. this is an excuse i have repeated myself, but it is just that, an excuse. have you actually been to china? i have never seen such sprawl. shanghai is massive and sprawling. but yet, they (china) have extremely efficient and unbelievably cheap train…

If you want to see what prices would be in the U.S, look at Japan. Tokyo to Kyoto one way is 13,080 yen ($120) for the cheapest ticket, for a distance of 226 miles. About the same distance as DC to New York. A lot of people think high speed rail would be cheaper to flying, in reality it's often the same or more than flying today. And it then costs billions of dollars to build the rail. As for subways, that unfortunat…

> Tokyo to Kyoto one way is 13,080 yen ($120) for the cheapest ticket, for a distance of 226 miles. About the same distance as DC to New York.

> A lot of people think high speed rail would be cheaper to flying, in reality it's often the same or more than flying today.

It's a lot more comfortable, and you end up in a downtown location instead of an airport on the outskirts of the city.

Re: China laying tracks for 1,000km/h maglev trains

#348

Post by [deleted] »

ju577ry wrote: post #19
geogra4 wrote: post #3

As fast as a jetliner, and way more efficient. Can be powered without fossil fuels. This is the future. Where is America on HSR?

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.

[deleted]

Re: China laying tracks for 1,000km/h maglev trains

#349

Post by Gibbon1 »

jbay808 wrote: post #321
MrFlynn wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because they mostly avoided mountains on their high speed routes. The Tokaido and Sanyo Shinkansen mostly follow the coastline and the Tohoku Shinkansen mostly goes through a valley. There are lines that do bore through mountain ranges, but nothing to the extent of several hundred miles as would be required for a line through the California coastal range.

Except the one they're building now... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ch%C5%AB%C5%8D_Shinkansen "About 90% of the 286-kilometre (178 mi) line to Nagoya will be built underground or through tunnels"

I feel like this sort of thing just proves that the problem with building high speed rail in the US is cultural[1] and political[2] not technical or economic.

[1] Americans have been carefully propagandized to believe that governments can't do anything right. And cars represent manhood and freedom.

[2] For instance Ubber and Lift are funding the same anti public transportation organizations the Koch brother(s) were.

Re: China laying tracks for 1,000km/h maglev trains

#350

Post by HenryKissinger »

lmm wrote: post #248
nikofeyn wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A major problem with train systems in the United States (and this is both short and long haul) is that almost the entire country is sprawl - built around the automobile. this is an excuse i have repeated myself, but it is just that, an excuse. have you actually been to china? i have never seen such sprawl. shanghai is massive and sprawling. but yet, they (china) have extremely efficient and unbelievably cheap train…

Shanghai is massive but that's just the sheer size of its population. It's the most populous city in the world on some measures; they've planning for 30 billion by 2030. It's built much denser than most US cities, which means it's much more walkable, and the subway network also makes it much more practical to travel by train because it means you don't need a car at the other end. You have to start with getting rid of…

> they've planning for 30 billion by 2030.

I think you mean 30 million. A city of 30 billion would contiguously occupy a continent.

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