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Why high speed rail hasn’t caught on

caseyhandmer.wordpress.com

51–60 of 140 posts

Re: Why high speed rail hasn’t caught on

#51

Maybe the emphasis on high speed in not necessary. People already seem to love sitting around in all kinds of environments.. bars, watching netflix, or programming for a lot of people here. What if instead of figuring out what kind of rails would be needed to move a train at the speed of flight, we figured out what kind of rails were needed to economically move the equivalent of a first class lounge from Los Angeles…

Good idea.

But also, why not invest in virtual presence so we don't need to travel so much? Except if we want to.

Re: Why high speed rail hasn’t caught on

#52
post #3

What I find odd about this is that... Trains are the go-to means of intercity transport across much of Europe. The term "High speed rail" isn't strictly defined, but seems to kick in somewhere between 110 and 155 mph. Pretty much every intercity train in the UK is running at 125mph for at least some of their journey. Europe is full of functioning high speed rail networks - TGV, ICE, Eurostar, networks in Spain and It…

London-Edinburgh is only just faster by train. There is not much in it TBH. It is about the break even point I guess. There are other benefits like you can use your phone and get up and walk around more easily. If you go first class you can actually get some work done at tables and stuff. But the flip side is train travel is often 10 or 20 times more expensive than flying, so only worth doing if you can expense it IM…

In cases where trains and planes are equally fast, trains basically always win on comfort. Much easier boarding, better legroom, longer time of being able to sit down and focus on your work, and so on.

Re: Why high speed rail hasn’t caught on

#53
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"functioning" is an exaggeration. Most of the German trains are slower than 300kph most of the time. They are also often crowded, delayed or outright cancelled. They are also quite expensive, compared to planes. I think the author has a very valid point when it comes to the cost of rail tracks. It's something the proponents always conveniently ignore. On top of that, a rail station has quite a limited capacity, espec…

> low-maintenance, high-capacity fast train, planes with ecofuel is either existing? > On top of that, a rail station has quite a limited capacity, especially if it's inside the city. Traffic generated by rail station limited by capacity would require gargantuan airport to handle it, which would anyway require bus/train/car connections from within city taking even more space.

A fun stat is:

Daily passengers on the New York subway system is around the same as total daily passengers on every commercial flight in the US.

Re: Why high speed rail hasn’t caught on

#54
post #31

I don’t understand the point of high speed rail. You can just show up for a domestic flight 30 mins before and you get to your destination 4x faster. The only good thing about trains are the views.

Milan to Rome by rail is 30 minutes from home to a seat on the train (by underground, one train every 3 minutes,) 3 hours to the center of Rome. By plane is 30 minutes to the closest airport or 90 minutes to the two further away (by train or bus, about one every 20/30 minutes.) Boarding time, probably at least one hour (factor in the connection time with the train or bus). Taxi to take off, one hour flight, taxi to t…

Milan to Paris? Ride. 5 comfortable direct trains per day with tickets starting at 29€! https://www.seat61.com/international-trains/trains-from-Mila...

Re: Why high speed rail hasn’t caught on

#56
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In many HN publications the label "In USA" is applicable, the equivalent of "In mice" for many medical studies :)

Read the article—the author prefaces with their experience riding trains all over the world and has worked in rail. There is a ton of detail, much more interesting than the conclusion.

The article takes the premise that HSR should go 320 kph (200mph) and then explains why that is infeasible in many places.

The article says much less about rail at 200kph (125mph). Which might serve to replace airplanes. Especially once CO2 externalities are priced in.

Re: Why high speed rail hasn’t caught on

#57
post #28

> Indeed, as far as I know there isn’t a single HSR route anywhere on Earth that operates profitably on ticketing revenue The key part.

The key part that misses that pretty much no infrastructure like a motorway or muncipal airport generates a profit on ticketing alone. Ignoring the initial construction cost, many HSR lines were profitable (prepandemic), i.e this private italian train operator: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuovo_Trasporto_Viaggiatori

Re: Why high speed rail hasn’t caught on

#58
post #5

Riding the high-speed rail in China made me so envious of that setup. If we had that in certain locations in the U.S., it would be absolutely amazing. You just show up a half hour before your train (gotta get there earlier in certain huge stations) and basically walk on. The train ride is buttery smooth with a lot of space, and you can order food from the next station to be delivered to you if you don't want any of t…

But why do this over just flying. You can show up 30-45 mins before any domestic flight and leave as soon as you land on the other end.

30 minutes is a very long wait for a train and very short one for a flight.

Plus most train terminals are in the center of the city and quicker to get to.

Re: Why high speed rail hasn’t caught on

#59
post #5

Riding the high-speed rail in China made me so envious of that setup. If we had that in certain locations in the U.S., it would be absolutely amazing. You just show up a half hour before your train (gotta get there earlier in certain huge stations) and basically walk on. The train ride is buttery smooth with a lot of space, and you can order food from the next station to be delivered to you if you don't want any of t…

But why do this over just flying. You can show up 30-45 mins before any domestic flight and leave as soon as you land on the other end.

In Spain train stations are centrally located while it adds additional time (in a train usually) to get to the airport in the suburbs. One can arrive at the train a few minutes before departure rather as security is nothing more than a quick scan.

Re: Why high speed rail hasn’t caught on

#60
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"functioning" is an exaggeration. Most of the German trains are slower than 300kph most of the time. They are also often crowded, delayed or outright cancelled. They are also quite expensive, compared to planes. I think the author has a very valid point when it comes to the cost of rail tracks. It's something the proponents always conveniently ignore. On top of that, a rail station has quite a limited capacity, espec…

> low-maintenance, high-capacity fast train, planes with ecofuel is either existing? > On top of that, a rail station has quite a limited capacity, especially if it's inside the city. Traffic generated by rail station limited by capacity would require gargantuan airport to handle it, which would anyway require bus/train/car connections from within city taking even more space.

He is not entirely wrong about the capacity limits of the railway stations, though. European cities struggle with inadequate railway capacity all the time.

The main problem is that the original railway stations were laid out in about 1840-1870, for much smaller passenger streams, and today find it hard to cope with modern requirements (a lot of commuters from the suburbia). But given that there is dense city infrastructure all around them, the only way to solve this is to build a new station underground, which is hideously expensive and slow.

Berlin was somewhat "lucky" to have a good place to build their new Hauptbahnhof, a result of the former division of the city. Stuttgart is rebuilding and upgrading its railway network at a great expense, the construction works started in 2010 and are far from finished.

In Prague, there is a lot of discussion what to do with the rail network in the center. You cannot just tear down whole tracts of buildings in a historical city, so yes, we will have to go the Stuttgart route and who knows what the budget (and) time overrun will be.

I commute with a train daily. The lack of capacity is visible in chronic delays, sometimes up to 30 minutes. Fortunately I do not have to be at my office at a precise hour, but going to a medical appointment without wasting too much time is already a bit of a challenge. I even witnessed a 15 minute delay at 4:30 in the morning.

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