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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

#61

Post by pansinghkoder »

macspoofing wrote: post #52
pansinghkoder wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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? Rail freight transport. What is holding Europe in rail freight transport? Passenger rail. You choose one or the other. Personally I think America made (or fell into) the correct decision.

Can you share some article to back up your facts? All I could find here is, american freight trains are longer and run over a longer distance.

: https://www.freightwaves.com/news/railroad/us-and-european-f....

After living next to train tracks in SF (for 7 yrs) and in PDX for (over 2 yrs) I can tell you that train tracks traffic is not even 10% of Euro cities like Stuttgart, Rotterdam let alone Berlin or Paris.

If traffic(freight+passenger)US is roughly equal to traffic(freight+passenger)EU then, the tracks should be equally busy no?

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

#62

Post by privong »

wpdev_63 wrote: post #53
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…

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…

> Amtrak and Acela do not actually own the railway they use...

This is true for most of the Amtrak mileage, but the Northeast Corridor rails are largely owned by Amtrak[0,pg4]:

Amtrak owns and operates 363 route-miles of the 457-route-mile Northeast Corridor (NEC) spine between Washington and Boston.

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

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

#63

Post by teclordphrack2 »

macspoofing wrote: post #43
jsu32 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love trains and I'm a EU-born US resident, so I get it. It's a density problem though. US is super sparsely populated. Outside of the northeast corridor (DC NYC Boston) the rest is too spread out with few exceptions to support train service. The US highway system is like spaghetti for good reason.

>It's a density problem though. If you want to take a train to Idaho from Boston, sure, but nobody would do that. And for NY->Boston, it's plenty dense. Freight traffic is miles ahead in American than in Europe, and is always prioritized over passenger trains - that's the reason.

As far as Amtrak is concerned the laws say that they are to take precedent over freight BUT that is not what happens on a regular basis. The rail owners never get in trouble for it.

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

#64

Post by mattkrause »

wpdev_63 wrote: post #53
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…

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…

That's true if you consider all of Amtrak.

The Northeast Corridor, which the GP is talking about, is a bit of a special case. Amtrak owns the tracks from NY to DC (states own the CT/MA part) and they're good enough to go a bit faster than the otherwise-usual 79 mph speed limit. This part of Amtrak is, IIRC, fairly profitable. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_Corridor

In the rest of the country, Amtrak is indeed stuck on freight lines, and service is often slow and unprofitable, but it's not entirely on them either. Passenger traffic is supposed to be prioritized, but the freight lines are not great about it and have been fined for not doing so (though, not enough to make them do it either). There are also weird political considerations about routes.

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

#65

Post by BuildTheRobots »

phab wrote: post #27

It's interesting that they state that the train was moving, but not how fast . My understanding was that one of the challenges with doing good mobile broadband on trains (esp. for VoIP applications) is how seamlessly you manage the handover between cells makes a big difference to real-world usability. If the train was going pretty slowly that would obviously make your time-per-cell a lot higher / % of time spent perf…

Handover is a massive non-trivial problem - I'm amazed you're the only one commenting on it.

GSM-R was modification to the 2G mobile phone specification specifically to help with high speed handover, but being 2G it gives pretty awful data speeds (1mbit max iirc). If you google for LTE-R it seems there's special provisions to bring that fast handover ability to 4G & 5G networks.

As well as the actual radio layer, you've also got the mobility management side of things to consider, for example your IP address. If you've got a video streaming or a SIP call going then when you connect to the next radio tower your IP address has to move across as do any established data sessions - it's not just a case of getting a new DHCP lease and cracking on, there's some serious network orchestration and session management happening too.

(I'm convinced I read something a few years ago that one of the LTE design goals was to allow handover when moving at 200mph (that number seems stuck in my head), but I'm failing to find any mention of it outside of the LTE-R results).

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

#66

Post by ngngngng »

snarkypixel wrote: post #19

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

Computers could use small local hard drives and download what you need instantly. All of your documents would be backed up into the cloud because your entire hard drive would essentially be "the cloud"

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

#67

Post by atoombs »

foota wrote: post #58
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…

Roads don't break even, why should we expect trains to?

I never understand this line of thought. We invest in infrastructure to enable people to move between places, commune with one another, and trade goods. We've invested a tremendous amount in roads. Why do we expect other things like the USPS, Amtrak, etc. to generate profits when they're an expenditure in infrastructure?

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

#68

Post by conradev »

wpdev_63 wrote: post #53
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…

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…

We are supposedly building a Shinkansen-like train in Texas:

https://www.texastribune.org/2020/09/21/dallas-houston-high-...

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

#70

Post by jfim »

julienb_sea wrote: post #35
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…

If you regularly fly, security isn't much of an issue with precheck or clear. You can also fly into newark and take path, much faster to get to downtown, or fly into laguardia and uber (ok laguardia sucks I'm not really an advocate for this). The problem with train investment is it starts to look really uninteresting for most people once the train travel time is 5+ hours. The investment in improving airport connectiv…

Even with precheck, one still has to show up at the airport earlier than a train, since boarding stops 10-15 minutes prior to departure, TSA adds at least five to ten minutes, and the terminal topology of large airports requires a long walk from the curb to the gate.

For trains, even large stations don't have that long a walk, since the tracks run parallel to one another. As long as one shows up before the train pulls into the station, it's all good.

As you point out, trains definitely don't replace all flights, but for some dense corridors in the US (eg. Washington-Philadelphia-NYC-Boston, Dallas-Houston, San Francisco-San Jose-Los Angeles-San Diego) high speed rail would offer a better experience (larger seats, more comfortable ride, more uninterrupted time for working) and a comparable door to door time.

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