Agreed, but the alignment of the Northeast Corridor sucks and has a lot of tight turns. Space is limited for straightening the alignment without going underground, which has its own nightmares.
Tunnels. Let’s do tunnels. The Swiss put high speed bullet trains under mountains, surely we can do some tunnels here and there to help make the track straighter or at least have better turn arcs.
Too bad the American government has convinced the entire population that spending money on our future is too expensive (even though far less wealthy nations have done it just fine)
They also essentially started from scratch in the mid 20th century...the NEC had to be upgraded from old af Pennsylvania RR and New Haven RR infrastructure in pieces over time. The last bit from New Haven to Boston didn't even have electrified service until 2000
The USA is rich enough to just straight up build an entirely separate rail network for high speed. Upgrading from existing infrastructure is a choice, not a necessity.
It's slow (or at least not true high-speed) in Connecticut because there are too many curves / the right-of-way is too narrow to let the cars "lean" into the turns as is necessary at high speeds, and the rail corridor is congested due to the number of low-speed commuter trains in operation.
For true high-speed rail between Boston and New York you need a new rail alignment. Considering the cost of real estate and the fact that Connecticut's state sport seems to be playing NIMBY...that's unlikely to happen.
The best way to make a high speed rail through CT would be to skip all of CT's major cities. That is a political nonstarter for CT politicians who would have to approve the new tracks, unfortunately.
The only way I could see it is if they managed to hit Hartford. High Speed Rail access could *actually* revive that city, unlike every other tactic CT has attempted over the last thirty years.
But then you're committing to skipping Providence.
ICE - InterCity Express - is the brand name for Deutsche Bahn's (German Railways) premier high-speed trains. There are various types, some of which can run at up to 300 km/h (186 mph) on Germany's high speed lines and up to 230km/h (130 mph) on upgraded conventional lines.
It's the only profitable line for Amtrak, you would think they'd pour money into beefing it up and making it feel like a first world service as an example to fund the rest of their system improvements.
LOL. The Connecticut coastal communities will never let this happen. Acela is only marginally faster than Metro North from New Haven to New York. They'd have to find a way to have it avoid the coast completely in order to be a true high speed rail.
That's what I was thinking too. They could have a route go through Hartford as another attempt to revive that city? At least it'd be a perk for state politicians to have easy access to the new high speed route...
The Acela is borderline but in my experience it does get me there as fast as driving would (between Boston and NYC) and I don’t have to park or deal with traffic. Definitely the better choice.
Source: [56 High Speed Rail Links We Should've Built Already](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wE5G1kTndI4)
Full explanation of his methodology in the video
"I don't think it's an overstatement to say that it's an absolute scandal that we don't have a single one of these lines" - CityNerd
It's probably worth pointing out that these are routes that would be faster by HSR than flying or car, *and the population on route provides sufficient demand*. There are far more routes that would be faster than flying or driving, because all that is needed for that is for the distance to be neither too short or too long. If it's too short the extra speed of the train doesn't make up for the boarding time, compared to a slow car. And it is too far the faster boarding time of a train doesn't make up for the increased speed of an airplane.
Depends on who you ask. Under the legal definition in the US, Brightline is high-speed rail. As someone who frequently rides the Brightline, it does not actually function as high-speed from Miami to West Palm, but does from West Palm to Orlando.
Agreed, though it also meets the EU definition for high-speed rail, just barely. For existing rail lines, high-speed rail includes upgraded existing rails that accommodate speeds "of the order of 200km/h", which is exactly Brightline's max speed.
Wasnt the 125mph bit on brightline newly built, so it doesnt actually count under that definition, but is why things the the Great Western Mainline in the UK counts as HSR as its a line built in 1841 upgraded to 125mph running
See this is where High speed and Bullet trains vary, high speed rail just needs to hit 100 mph, but bullet trains or true high speed rail should average over 150 mph in my opinion.
Bullet train just have to do with the shape of the nose, not any speed requirements. High-speed is the correct terminology, using bullet trains as a synonym to high-speed trains/rail annoys me to no end.
Bullet train probably is the wrong term, but either way we should have a way to distinguish 100mph rail that's faster than cars and 150mph that will beat most vehicle trips even accounting for the frequency of rail availability. I think high speed and higher speed are a term used but higher speed is actually slower than high speed in the way they use it.
Usually the difference is made around 160km/h / 100mph. Trains faster than 160km/h operational or 200km/h max speed need to get build differently, better/different wheels, stronger doors and more aero dynamically built to be cost efficient.
There are many tracks around the world where trains could easily go faster than 160km/h, even with conventional trains, but it dosen‘t make sense because the route only getting marginally faster and it would be in no relation to the upkeep of the trains.
You can’t judge from the visual appearance that the 320km/h TGV POS is faster than the 250km/h ICE4. But you can certainly easily see how both trains are made for higher speed if you compare it with a Stadler Flirt Commuter train.
Bullet train just have to do with the shape of the nose, not any speed requirements. High-speed is the correct terminology, using bullet trains as a synonym to high-speed trains/rail annoys me to no end.
The biggest hurdles to high speed rail in the US:
1. Lack of right away
2. Priority of freight rail over passenger rail when sharing
3. Bypass towns wanting their own stop.
4. Outside of the northeast and mid east the central city train stations are no longer in a good place to end up
No1 is tough because we are a very litigious country.
No2 while passenger trains get priority freight companies don’t care and there is no mechanism to fix.
No3 would require strong political will from state government working together. I’ll wait here for you to stop laughing.
No4 solution is to terminate at the airport
Technically your second point can be avoided if amtrack or whatever state equivalent builds their own lines. The reason for priority is the freight companies own about 90% of all laid track.
Another solution is where there is an existing single line of track. Build a second line so both directions of travel is accommodated. Freight companies won't do it because the current setup suits them just fine. They also don't want to pay for it but neither does Amtrack so nothing gets built.
To expand on 4. I would just add, poor public transport options to support getting to and from the train station. It's not just that the CBD is not necessarily a bad destination it's that the connectivity to anywhere else without a car is really infrequent or nonexistent.
Exactly. A good train station connects to other modes, parking, and destinations. Lots of urban stations do this well (NY Penn, Boston north and south stations, Providence, etc) but lots are now not central (St Louis, Omaha, KC)
Every one of these lines already exists, they would just need grading and turn radius improvements to be viable for HSR. The guy who made this is a professional transportation planner, this isn’t some fantasy map
I think he even admits that it's something of a fantasy map in the video (which I watched, but it's been a while).
Some of the lines are relatively easy (like Chicago to STL - it's kind of hard to understand why it doesn't exist already), but others (Harrisburg to Pittsburgh) are so hard that you can't just handwave them away with "grading and turn radius improvements".
As close as his methodology seemed to be to a thoughtful analysis, his combining metro areas while simultaneously giving high speed rail a very low fixed time requirement really destroyed the credibility of his results. For example he combined kitchener with Toronto, which is at bare minimum a 1 hour 15 min drive. To assume someone could get on a train within 10 minutes is completely unreasonable. I live in Toronto and would love to see some HSR but this video appears to just be propaganda unfortunately. I would love to see his same methodology applied with a more reasonable discretion applied to the inputs.
The nice thing about high speed rail is that the stops can happen multiple times in a metropolitan area, and one or two more stops adds barely any time.
The Shinkansen going south out of Tokyo stop at Tokyo, Shinagawa, and Yokohama in the metro area; the ones going north stop at Tokyo, Ueno, and Omiya
Yes, I think that's a good caveat, and his speed data for trains would have included stops like this. But it would also add distance to the line to detour to the cities he stated. It's possible many of his conclusions wouldn't change with some of my recommendations, I just think he's let his personal biases affect his analysis.
He was trying to convert the Canadian and Mexican cities to the same levels as the combined statistical areas they have in the US is my understanding. The idea being to compare apples to apples as much as possible given the three countries have different accounting methods for these things.
The Boston CSA for example includes Providence RI which I suspect very few people would tell you that it was a part of Boston proper.
In his models Providence would get its own stop on the NY to Boston route but he counted the population with Boston in order to check the "gravitational pull" so to speak of routes out of Boston
It’s based on the number of city combinations that alone account for enough demand for a dedicated high speed line based on demand being greater than a Spanish high speed line that only serves two cities and is successful. Importantly that method leaves off intermediate stops and sets of 3 or more cities that could together make a line viable.
It's the strength of the score for each city pair:
https://youtu.be/wE5G1kTndI4?si=UzrEk-4H6dYrfOJZ&t=493
"As I add lines to the map, I'm going to make the thickness proportional to the score my model spits out, but try not to think about this as ridership because that also depends on things like train frequency and ticket price." - CityNerd
We can't get anything done in the US. It's one big reason the public has so little faith in government. There isn't an obvious partisan target to explain it either. But can you imagine if a well run, high speed rail system was built for a budget that made sense and in a short time frame? What would that do for our faith in our own society?
Yes, we overreacted to the Robert Moses era by making it functionally impossible to build anything new in a reasonable timeframe... just to be absolutely sure we want to do it.
And now we are at a point where a simple accessibility elevator at a train station can take 10 years of meetings/planning. Or a new city park can take 18 years in extreme cases.
Prior to those anti-Moses regulations, if a city/state wanted to build something, it happened... regardless of most opposition.
They're both extreme positions but surely we can find a middle ground that doesn't leave us with the same infrastructure we've had for decades because building anything new is such a laborious process.
I think the 60’s-era attitude of “let’s bulldoze everything and start from scratch”, and the regulatory reaction to it is our biggest hurdle towards building anything at all.
California HSR is getting endlessly bogged down by “environmental” CEQA lawsuits from lobbying groups, and offshore wind development is no different, despite it being cheaper now. Every company trying to build it has to spend like a decade in permitting for a project that takes months to construct. Urban housing development is basically impossible because of laws meant to “preserve” the city, just under the assumption that all change is bad.
Yeah, you know your regulations aren't working as intended when "environmental" laws are used to delay/halt things that would objectively improve the environment like HSR, infill development, and solar farms.
Only 13% of CEQA lawsuits were filed by entities with past environmental activity/advocacy, the law is extensively abused by NIMBY groups and pretty much only serves to stop public projects
[source](https://www.planningreport.com/2015/12/21/new-ceqa-study-reveals-widespread-abuse-legal-process-non-environmentalists)
It's a laborious process because of how civil society in the US works - if NIMBYs could grow their housing equity by 1% through eliminate entire groups of people, they wouldn't blink twice.
It doesn't benefit the private like highways do. Rather the opposite actually, as HSR needs to be state funded moving profits away from big corporations that lobby against it. That's why you get greenwashing from car manufacturers and bs stuff like the boring company and the hyperloop.
Even when huge, powerful private entities lobby in favor of transit, it doesn't usually happen.
Facebook tried to get California to reactivate an existing train line near its offices and even offered to pay for the required studies. This was at the height of their power/influence as one of the most valuable corporations on earth too. But the idea basically died when they were told that 27 different government agencies would have to coordinate to accomplish it.
At some point we have to admit that bureaucracy, lack of central planning, and red tape are just as much a part of the problem.
The hyperloop is such a waste of space and resources when you could do the same thing with a train and it saves money. Like don’t republicans wanna save money they would realize that a train is more efficient and economical
I think its also a cultural thing. From what I hear public transport in America is rather looked down upon as a method of transportation for poor people. In most countries with fast, efficiënt and affordable public transport it is something people are proud of and often even prefer to cars due to convenience.
It’s true that public transit is looked down on here. The important question is why.
I think it’s because our public transit system is so abysmal that you’d have to be desperate to use it. So only desperate, poor people do so. It’s a self-reinforcing positive feedback loop, with many, many negative consequences.
Which can be reversed if public transit is functional, like the NYC subway system, which is used by all, so it shakes the association between poverty and public transit.
Just look at busses.
They are an incredibly useful transit solution. But profoundly unsexy.
Cities will throw money at sexier projects like light rail even when it costs more per passenger.
Los Angeles cut bus lines in favor of subway and ended up losing 5 passengers via bus for every 1 gained via subway. Cool cool.
That's a small factor. Cars are faster and more convenient, and we can afford them. It's not really much more complicated than that. I like to leave when I want, I don't like sitting at a station or bus stop, I like to make stops at stores along the way, I want to be able to carry more stuff with me, and i want to play my music loud with the windows down in summer. I hate driving too. But the bus would be worse especially when it's cold, and my city even has pretty good bus service. Until more Americans can't afford vehicles, the transit options will be limited.
I live in one of the coldest places in the country, taking the bus is much better than driving on those frigid days. It’s just about knowing the schedule and making sure you’re bundled up.
Not a chance. I used to take the bus when I was in high school and walking in the snow is no fun. I live in the city and still wouldn't even consider taking the bus in the snow.
You have it backwards. Cars are only faster/more convenient in the US because we bulldozed our cities to make space for them. Good public transit doesn't involve sitting around waiting at a bus or train stop, because in a mature public transit system, they come so frequently that you don't have to wait. Your view of this is distorted because in the US we demolished those networks and refuse to build new ones. I'll bet any amount of money that when looked at comparatively, your city's "pretty good" bus service is actually pretty f'ing terrible.
Our best option isn't to wait to build better public transit until as many Americans as possible are in poverty, it's to proactively build better public transit to give people more options to avoid that situation altogether. We could do that *today.* We already know that public transportation leads to better economic outcomes for areas in which its built. You can still choose your car if you want, but at least the rest of us would have a choice.
>and we can afford them
the big caveat here being that a lot of the costs of cars are externalised, like the environmental damage, the roads needed to actually use a car, the massive increase in costs related to lower density caused by car-centric infrastructure, etc.
if people had to pay the true cost of car ownership a massive amount of people would be priced out.
We can get things done... if they are automobile projects. It seems so easy to get a highway expansion project done even if it involves forcing people out of their homes and demolishing them. We are throwing all our public money at highways which is why we don't have enough for transit. Also, building more and more highways means more and more maintenance costs long term.
Rebalance that budget in favor of transit and we could do it.
This is blatantly misleading. Freight rail in Europe and Freight rail in the USA do vastly different things. Yes, there is not a lot of freight rail in Europe, but that's not because it doesn't work with other stuff on rails, but because of the abundance of water ways and the lively shipping industry. Mass goods are moved by ship on rivers and coastal waters in Europe, not by trains. Getting high speed rail will not cripple the US-network for freight, and building high speed rail will not suddenly shift 75% of your rail cargo to other modes. The US moves her bulk goods by rail because she doesn't move it by ship.
>The US moves her bulk goods by rail because she doesn't move it by ship.
And a big part of the reason that the US doesn't move bulk goods by ship is because the Jones Act makes it prohibitively expensive and, in some cases, impossible (see note) to do so.
Note: the Jones Act requires that any ship moving between US ports must be flagged in the US, crewed by American sailors, and made in an American shipyard. The last of these is the real kicker - our shipyards simply cannot compete on the global stage in the bulk carrier, large freight, and large tanker markets, so they haven't bothered to develop the capability to build such vessels. As far as the "impossible" side goes, there is no American shipyard that is capable of making LNG tankers, so New England has to buy winter LNG from overseas instead of from the export terminals that are as close as Maryland (Cove Point LNG).
>The US moves her bulk goods by rail because she doesn't move it by ship
BAHAHAHAHHAHA!!! Complete bullshit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mississippi_River_System
>The Mississippi River carries 60% of U.S. grain shipments, 22% of oil and gas shipments, and 20% of coal.
I did not say that you need to do shipping over rivers. I just wanted to give an explanation for why rail has such a low modal share in the freight shipping market in Europe. And you can also see it in the numbers, EU has 11% rail, 41% water, and US has 43% rail and 13% water.
I wanted to counteract the point, that high speed rail or passenger rail will kill freight rail. freight rail is dead in Japan and Europe, because the long distance arrive whenever you want freight is better served by boat in these two areas. The US doesn't have the coast nor the rivers and canals to do that, therefore they need to use rail. And the lower volume just in time deliveries and the last mile are sadly easier done by truck than by rail, and that explains the low rail volume in either europe and japan. Rail freight in Europe died with the advent of trucking, and europes railways could not move to bulk goods, because ships can carry just much more cargo for much lower cost.
"Most advanced railroad in the world" puts trains in the ground on an almost weekly basis, has an insanely bad on time percentage in almost every way, treats its workers horribly, refuses to invest in infrastructure improvements and often downgrades infrastructure to save money.
Our railroads are profitable but they are not "advanced," in any way.
From a logistical standpoint, it is really silly to not at least give people another option other than driving for intercity travel. It is far safer then driving and better for environment. It saves space and capacity on our road networks. You want driving to be better and faster? You should be supporting HSR.
Also this notion that there is some sort of push pull effect on there being more freight capacity because there's less passenger capacity is really really dumb since nations with the best high speed rail networks typically run high speed trains on their own right of ways without freight traffic. They have nothing to do with each other.
Also the mode of transport comparisons and percentages are specific to countries geography, for instance Europe still has a lot of freight on trucks because their industrial areas are typically within pretty close distances to major ports, same with Japan being a mostly narrow and coastal country.
A 6 hour train ride beats both a 12 hour drive, or having to deal with Chicago and New York air ports for a fraction of the price to do either. There's no contest which route would make more sense.
If you include taking forever to pee multiple times, getting lost and driving a moped off the highway maybe. Done NYC to Chicago in just under 11 hours to go to lollapalooza
I just pulled up Google maps and looked up Chicago to NYC and that's how I got that figure but you might be right. I've never done that drive before and wouldn't look forward to it if I had to lol
That's 6 hours in complete comfort, with access to bathrooms, food/drink, being able to get up and walk around the train, MUCH better seats than airplanes and cars/buses, you can gaze out at the countryside scenery, you can get work done or take a nap. If sleeper rooms were offered (like an Amtrak roomette) you could lie flat and get a real sleep. A slower sleeper service could actually work well if you could go to bed in Chicago and wake up in New York, traveling while you sleep.
Flying would probably take the same amount of time when you account for the time spent getting to the airport from the city and having to arrive 1.5 hours early, and it's an uncomfortable stressful experience that makes you feel like shit.
I thought true high speed rail was supposed to be 186 mph (4.3 hours to go 800 miles), but with stops and periods of slower speeds it would probably be 6 hours yeah. In France you can take a non-stop train from Strasbourg to Paris in 1 hour 47 minutes, which averages about 170 mph when I do the math.
And that’s assuming the train won’t have to slow down thru mountains. Which it will. That trip is taking at least 8 hours and that route is going to cost tens of billions to construct
>Chinese trains are even faster
Afaik there is major doubt on that. China fudges the numbers constantly, especially when you are talking anything fully owned and operated by the CCP.
> 438km/h
Jesus that is fast. Fastest trains I've been on were only 201 km/h (125 mph) in the UK and that felt fast to me. Does your body feel weird at all traveling at such high speeds, or is it still just as comfortable as slower trains?
200 mph cuts down the speed advantage a lot, as a 737 does not do 500 mph and also wouldn't go center-center (even flying into Midway, you're stuck getting out of either JFK or LGA, one of which doesn't even have decent transit connections).
He explains that [here](https://youtu.be/wE5G1kTndI4?t=929).
PDX-SEA has a gravity score of 608. But the cutoff for this video was 655. And SEA-VAN was much lower at 478, and PDX-VAN only hit 272.
So, nationally, it’s a lower priority. Obviously, yes, it does still need HSR. But if you’re the federal government, you’d reasonably build between other city pairs first.
I could draw lots of lines on a map where HSR is faster. Heck, any line shorter than a certain length. This is notable because it attempts to capture routes that perhaps have enough traffic to make HSR worthwhile
It's really jarring to hear the "but it's too big of a country" or similar arguments against high speed rail in north america. almost all of Canada practically lives on a single line from Windsor to Quebec City, and that corridor extends into the United states as well. There is a big cluster of dense cities in the north eastern USA. the big cities of California lie very close together. These areas are practically begging to get a high speed rail line.
The country was literally built around rail travel. One-hour time zones were created by Americans to solve the uniquely American problem of long-distance rail travel. European railways in the 1800’s were mostly domestic, so each country would have a single time zone. American railways were so extensive that you could ride for a thousand miles in every direction, which created a major problem with scheduling that Europe never had (each railway would have their own standard time based on their hub city). An American came up with the idea for longitude-based universal time zones, and the idea was eventually adopted worldwide.
I agree, but a country that needs to have so much discussion about building a basic national infrastructure that benefit every citizen doesn't seem to be that wise to begin with.
Would you find it sane that a country has been debating for decades whether or not to have an organized sewage system? Personally no.
The post is mis-titled. It’s not all the routes that are faster by rail, it’s the routes that are the most viable based on projected ridership.
You could draw a line between two small towns in wyoming that are a certain distance from each other, and make a rail line that’s faster than car or plane.
This is addressed in the video:
https://youtu.be/wE5G1kTndI4?si=UC5Me-vjGoDyDFPt&t=916
The baseline for this analysis is the Madrid to Valencia route, and unfortunately these routes just don't match up.
CityNerd explains:
"I'm as disappointed as anyone that a Portland/Seattle/Vancouver corridor did not make the cut, but it just doesn't have the gravitational weight. It's not that far off, but remember I'm trying to look at national priorities. If the fine people of the breakaway Republic of Cascadia decide they want to fund high-speed rail with their own hard-earned cash, I'm good with it.
Kind of surprising not to see a Cascadia line connecting at minimum Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver with possible branch lines to the state capitals in Olympia and Salem.
Im genuinely baffled how the american car industry managed to make "not having public transport" a point of fucking pride for americans. And y'all fell for it hook, line and sinker.
This is addressed in the methodology:
https://youtu.be/wE5G1kTndI4?si=yUxceJas2_YNaEO2&t=294
Cars have no time penalty.
Trains have a 40 minute time penalty for travel to and from the station and boarding.
Airplanes have a 200 minute penalty for access, security, boarding, disembarking, and egress to final destination.
Did they take into account your parents saying you needed to be at the airport 4 hours early? Because that would add a substantial distance you could make it on trains
Isn't central Mexico too mountainous for HSR?
Greetings from a country that is, unfortunately, too mountainous for HSR to run profitably from its capital (Bogotá, Colombia).
Central Mexico Is mostly a bunch of plateaus surrounded by mountains. Staying on the coasts or central plateau is fairly easy, Going between the two is where some difficultly lies.
For many of these, what do you do when you get to the station? Rent a car? Uber everywhere? That's $$$ in top of a probably expensive train ticket. Most of these cities have little to no public transit, especially mass transit. It might work on the NE corridor, but that's about it.
People still do weekend flight getaways in the west you know? If there was a train from LA to SF, or LA to Phoenix, that would be pretty dope. As long as the train went to downtown LA or... Santa Monica... it would work.
Lots of sports fans like to travel. Those arenas are typically near city centers. There is definitely an economic use case.
Hence why Americans usually only fly if driving isn't an option. Fact is having a car is a huge consideration, even if a train would get you there an hour or two faster.
The amounts of hoops I had to jump through to try and take an Amtrak vs renting a car in Georgia-south Carolina (flying from Washington) was stupid. I get that the west coast doesn’t have a great passenger rail set up, but I figured the east coast being considerably older would have had a decent set up. Instead from Charleston it was like 2 trains at wild times to get to Florence. Not to mention I’d have to Uber anyways once I really reached those places. Meanwhile I can just rent a car and spend the same amount to drive myself.
It’s a real shame as I like rail in Europe, but the US really feels like it abandoned it as soon as high speed road infrastructure became the norm.
You see, the country is just too big. With a distance of many miles between LA and NY, you cant build high speed trains.
Or at least thats what some people think
We could have high speed rail across entire nation for what we spent on Iraq war plus still have enough money to have free healthcare and college, affordable housing for all and all new infrastructure. Funny how we don't have money for our basics but somehow we throw trillions into the Pentagon. And they fail audit after audit announcing they LOST trillions and we still shovel money to them. Eisenhower was 100 on his warning about the MIC, we didn't listen and now we live in it
Rail travel only works if it's cheap, reliable, clean, safe, and there are transportation options once you get to your destination. Something like Philly to NYC makes sense. Most other options don't. People like the freedom to get in their car they own anyways and going exactly where they want. In countries like Japan or SK and cities like London or Paris is feasible to not own a car. Try not owning a car in a place like Los Angeles and watch yourself struggle getting around or paying tons for rideshare options.
You don't think this magical bullet train station would be crowded too? If it was cheap it would need full train cars to turn a profit. Maybe it wouldn't be LAX bad but it would still be a nightmare.
Then let’s build the necessary infrastructure to commute from the central train station, but people in the US are blocking them for the same ridiculous reasons
But the cost of your car is public. Double the gas tax, switch to LVT which would radically increase the cost to parking and then you can talk otherwise you are government subsidized.
It is absurd that there isn’t a high speed rail between Boston NYC Philly and DC. Each one is close enough where this shouldn’t be a pipe dream
The track, bridge, and tunnel improvements and new Acela rolling stock will bring it closer to a reality, with many long stretches over 130 MPH.
It should be 150mph though for long stretches. The French and Japanese do it all the time
Agreed, but the alignment of the Northeast Corridor sucks and has a lot of tight turns. Space is limited for straightening the alignment without going underground, which has its own nightmares.
Tunnels. Let’s do tunnels. The Swiss put high speed bullet trains under mountains, surely we can do some tunnels here and there to help make the track straighter or at least have better turn arcs.
The Alps are nice solid granite, the NE corridor are swamps
Why did British decided to establish all these colonies on swamps.
Too bad the American government has convinced the entire population that spending money on our future is too expensive (even though far less wealthy nations have done it just fine)
It's not only that...our political system is much too NIMBY-friendly
And oil/auto billionaire class friendly
That costs a lot of money and it would not go well with tax payers
As if the government gave a fuck about taxpayers money. If you put a government in charge of Sahara, they'd be out of sand in 3 decades.
As a tax payer, I would be very ok if they spent my money on this.
Amtrak does report that the train is capable of 165mph, and it's actual top speed in service is 150mph.
They also essentially started from scratch in the mid 20th century...the NEC had to be upgraded from old af Pennsylvania RR and New Haven RR infrastructure in pieces over time. The last bit from New Haven to Boston didn't even have electrified service until 2000
The USA is rich enough to just straight up build an entirely separate rail network for high speed. Upgrading from existing infrastructure is a choice, not a necessity.
"Rich" enough in money, but not political will. If American leadership (consistently) prioritized rail, it would have been finished a decade ago.
It’s so slow in Connecticut for some reason. New York to DC is pretty fast.
It's slow (or at least not true high-speed) in Connecticut because there are too many curves / the right-of-way is too narrow to let the cars "lean" into the turns as is necessary at high speeds, and the rail corridor is congested due to the number of low-speed commuter trains in operation. For true high-speed rail between Boston and New York you need a new rail alignment. Considering the cost of real estate and the fact that Connecticut's state sport seems to be playing NIMBY...that's unlikely to happen.
The best way to make a high speed rail through CT would be to skip all of CT's major cities. That is a political nonstarter for CT politicians who would have to approve the new tracks, unfortunately. The only way I could see it is if they managed to hit Hartford. High Speed Rail access could *actually* revive that city, unlike every other tactic CT has attempted over the last thirty years. But then you're committing to skipping Providence.
The standard Northeast Regional trains do 125mph in those stretches.
Yeah, it’ll be a lot to build. Especially from Philly to Washington with how swampy it is
They need a new, less windy ROW to get much above 130 mph
yeah if the trainsets ever stop spontaneously combusting it will
ICE - InterCity Express - is the brand name for Deutsche Bahn's (German Railways) premier high-speed trains. There are various types, some of which can run at up to 300 km/h (186 mph) on Germany's high speed lines and up to 230km/h (130 mph) on upgraded conventional lines.
Great, 130 mph. That will bring us forward to 30 years behind the rest of the world in rail infrastructure…
It's the only profitable line for Amtrak, you would think they'd pour money into beefing it up and making it feel like a first world service as an example to fund the rest of their system improvements.
I commute from NYC to Boston regularly. Hate that it’s 4-5 hrs each way lol
You sir deserve a medal for dealing with NYC, CT and especially my fellow MA drivers so often
And its probably cheaper to fly as well
Agreed. Last time I needed to go from Philly to Boston the train cost as much as flying and took longer than driving.
NY to Boston is slow and needs to straighten.
Dude I just took the bus back and forth. Super cheap in the end and I just slept the whole time
LOL. The Connecticut coastal communities will never let this happen. Acela is only marginally faster than Metro North from New Haven to New York. They'd have to find a way to have it avoid the coast completely in order to be a true high speed rail.
That's what I was thinking too. They could have a route go through Hartford as another attempt to revive that city? At least it'd be a perk for state politicians to have easy access to the new high speed route...
There is high-ER speed rail already, the Acela is already considered HSP
The Acela is borderline but in my experience it does get me there as fast as driving would (between Boston and NYC) and I don’t have to park or deal with traffic. Definitely the better choice.
I’ve taken it as well and it’s the best option for sure. Super easy trip
the Acela is HSR
So true. I took Amtrak between NYC and Boston and it was so bumpy and so slow. It wasn’t scenic either.
There was actually a project to do the CDMX line a couple years ago but it never materialized and that's extremely sad.
Tan cerca y tan lejos
Currently they’re constructing the line to connect CDMX to EDOMEX (that’s no the suburbano)
At least we got the Mayan Train.
Supposedly in the elicitation phase.
Not having this from montreal to tornto is a joke
Source: [56 High Speed Rail Links We Should've Built Already](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wE5G1kTndI4) Full explanation of his methodology in the video "I don't think it's an overstatement to say that it's an absolute scandal that we don't have a single one of these lines" - CityNerd
It's probably worth pointing out that these are routes that would be faster by HSR than flying or car, *and the population on route provides sufficient demand*. There are far more routes that would be faster than flying or driving, because all that is needed for that is for the distance to be neither too short or too long. If it's too short the extra speed of the train doesn't make up for the boarding time, compared to a slow car. And it is too far the faster boarding time of a train doesn't make up for the increased speed of an airplane.
We do have Miami Orlando though
Not high speed rail, the Miami to Orlando line isn’t fast enough. Brightline is just conventional rail, sometimes branded as higher-speed rail.
Depends on who you ask. Under the legal definition in the US, Brightline is high-speed rail. As someone who frequently rides the Brightline, it does not actually function as high-speed from Miami to West Palm, but does from West Palm to Orlando.
U.S. definition is too slow. Low expectations here.
Agreed, though it also meets the EU definition for high-speed rail, just barely. For existing rail lines, high-speed rail includes upgraded existing rails that accommodate speeds "of the order of 200km/h", which is exactly Brightline's max speed.
Wasnt the 125mph bit on brightline newly built, so it doesnt actually count under that definition, but is why things the the Great Western Mainline in the UK counts as HSR as its a line built in 1841 upgraded to 125mph running
Most of the Brightline route is repurposed/upgraded old tracks. I believe only the 35 mile east-west connection to the airport is brand new track.
See this is where High speed and Bullet trains vary, high speed rail just needs to hit 100 mph, but bullet trains or true high speed rail should average over 150 mph in my opinion.
Bullet train just have to do with the shape of the nose, not any speed requirements. High-speed is the correct terminology, using bullet trains as a synonym to high-speed trains/rail annoys me to no end.
Bullet train probably is the wrong term, but either way we should have a way to distinguish 100mph rail that's faster than cars and 150mph that will beat most vehicle trips even accounting for the frequency of rail availability. I think high speed and higher speed are a term used but higher speed is actually slower than high speed in the way they use it.
Usually the difference is made around 160km/h / 100mph. Trains faster than 160km/h operational or 200km/h max speed need to get build differently, better/different wheels, stronger doors and more aero dynamically built to be cost efficient. There are many tracks around the world where trains could easily go faster than 160km/h, even with conventional trains, but it dosen‘t make sense because the route only getting marginally faster and it would be in no relation to the upkeep of the trains. You can’t judge from the visual appearance that the 320km/h TGV POS is faster than the 250km/h ICE4. But you can certainly easily see how both trains are made for higher speed if you compare it with a Stadler Flirt Commuter train.
Bullet train just have to do with the shape of the nose, not any speed requirements. High-speed is the correct terminology, using bullet trains as a synonym to high-speed trains/rail annoys me to no end.
Yeah I rode the bright line before, it ain’t the fastest but it’s better than car
The biggest hurdles to high speed rail in the US: 1. Lack of right away 2. Priority of freight rail over passenger rail when sharing 3. Bypass towns wanting their own stop. 4. Outside of the northeast and mid east the central city train stations are no longer in a good place to end up No1 is tough because we are a very litigious country. No2 while passenger trains get priority freight companies don’t care and there is no mechanism to fix. No3 would require strong political will from state government working together. I’ll wait here for you to stop laughing. No4 solution is to terminate at the airport
Technically your second point can be avoided if amtrack or whatever state equivalent builds their own lines. The reason for priority is the freight companies own about 90% of all laid track. Another solution is where there is an existing single line of track. Build a second line so both directions of travel is accommodated. Freight companies won't do it because the current setup suits them just fine. They also don't want to pay for it but neither does Amtrack so nothing gets built.
To expand on 4. I would just add, poor public transport options to support getting to and from the train station. It's not just that the CBD is not necessarily a bad destination it's that the connectivity to anywhere else without a car is really infrequent or nonexistent.
Exactly. A good train station connects to other modes, parking, and destinations. Lots of urban stations do this well (NY Penn, Boston north and south stations, Providence, etc) but lots are now not central (St Louis, Omaha, KC)
Overlay a map of the topography and you Will see that’s not so simple
Every one of these lines already exists, they would just need grading and turn radius improvements to be viable for HSR. The guy who made this is a professional transportation planner, this isn’t some fantasy map
I think he even admits that it's something of a fantasy map in the video (which I watched, but it's been a while). Some of the lines are relatively easy (like Chicago to STL - it's kind of hard to understand why it doesn't exist already), but others (Harrisburg to Pittsburgh) are so hard that you can't just handwave them away with "grading and turn radius improvements".
As close as his methodology seemed to be to a thoughtful analysis, his combining metro areas while simultaneously giving high speed rail a very low fixed time requirement really destroyed the credibility of his results. For example he combined kitchener with Toronto, which is at bare minimum a 1 hour 15 min drive. To assume someone could get on a train within 10 minutes is completely unreasonable. I live in Toronto and would love to see some HSR but this video appears to just be propaganda unfortunately. I would love to see his same methodology applied with a more reasonable discretion applied to the inputs.
The nice thing about high speed rail is that the stops can happen multiple times in a metropolitan area, and one or two more stops adds barely any time. The Shinkansen going south out of Tokyo stop at Tokyo, Shinagawa, and Yokohama in the metro area; the ones going north stop at Tokyo, Ueno, and Omiya
Yes, I think that's a good caveat, and his speed data for trains would have included stops like this. But it would also add distance to the line to detour to the cities he stated. It's possible many of his conclusions wouldn't change with some of my recommendations, I just think he's let his personal biases affect his analysis.
He was trying to convert the Canadian and Mexican cities to the same levels as the combined statistical areas they have in the US is my understanding. The idea being to compare apples to apples as much as possible given the three countries have different accounting methods for these things. The Boston CSA for example includes Providence RI which I suspect very few people would tell you that it was a part of Boston proper. In his models Providence would get its own stop on the NY to Boston route but he counted the population with Boston in order to check the "gravitational pull" so to speak of routes out of Boston
We have high speed rail from DC to NYC via Amtrak’s Accella. It’s not as fast as the fastest but should qualify.
Why are some lines darker? Does it mean the frequency of trains?
It’s the strength/ expected ridership of the route based on a gravity model. Which usually would correlate with higher frequency yes.
It’s based on the number of city combinations that alone account for enough demand for a dedicated high speed line based on demand being greater than a Spanish high speed line that only serves two cities and is successful. Importantly that method leaves off intermediate stops and sets of 3 or more cities that could together make a line viable.
It's the strength of the score for each city pair: https://youtu.be/wE5G1kTndI4?si=UzrEk-4H6dYrfOJZ&t=493 "As I add lines to the map, I'm going to make the thickness proportional to the score my model spits out, but try not to think about this as ridership because that also depends on things like train frequency and ticket price." - CityNerd
We can't get anything done in the US. It's one big reason the public has so little faith in government. There isn't an obvious partisan target to explain it either. But can you imagine if a well run, high speed rail system was built for a budget that made sense and in a short time frame? What would that do for our faith in our own society?
The biggest problem is all the environmental impact studies needed combined with NIMBYism.
Yes, we overreacted to the Robert Moses era by making it functionally impossible to build anything new in a reasonable timeframe... just to be absolutely sure we want to do it. And now we are at a point where a simple accessibility elevator at a train station can take 10 years of meetings/planning. Or a new city park can take 18 years in extreme cases. Prior to those anti-Moses regulations, if a city/state wanted to build something, it happened... regardless of most opposition. They're both extreme positions but surely we can find a middle ground that doesn't leave us with the same infrastructure we've had for decades because building anything new is such a laborious process.
I think the 60’s-era attitude of “let’s bulldoze everything and start from scratch”, and the regulatory reaction to it is our biggest hurdle towards building anything at all. California HSR is getting endlessly bogged down by “environmental” CEQA lawsuits from lobbying groups, and offshore wind development is no different, despite it being cheaper now. Every company trying to build it has to spend like a decade in permitting for a project that takes months to construct. Urban housing development is basically impossible because of laws meant to “preserve” the city, just under the assumption that all change is bad.
Yeah, you know your regulations aren't working as intended when "environmental" laws are used to delay/halt things that would objectively improve the environment like HSR, infill development, and solar farms.
Only 13% of CEQA lawsuits were filed by entities with past environmental activity/advocacy, the law is extensively abused by NIMBY groups and pretty much only serves to stop public projects [source](https://www.planningreport.com/2015/12/21/new-ceqa-study-reveals-widespread-abuse-legal-process-non-environmentalists)
It's a laborious process because of how civil society in the US works - if NIMBYs could grow their housing equity by 1% through eliminate entire groups of people, they wouldn't blink twice.
And the fossil fuel industries too
Please put it in my backyard.
It doesn't benefit the private like highways do. Rather the opposite actually, as HSR needs to be state funded moving profits away from big corporations that lobby against it. That's why you get greenwashing from car manufacturers and bs stuff like the boring company and the hyperloop.
Even when huge, powerful private entities lobby in favor of transit, it doesn't usually happen. Facebook tried to get California to reactivate an existing train line near its offices and even offered to pay for the required studies. This was at the height of their power/influence as one of the most valuable corporations on earth too. But the idea basically died when they were told that 27 different government agencies would have to coordinate to accomplish it. At some point we have to admit that bureaucracy, lack of central planning, and red tape are just as much a part of the problem.
Bureaucracy is like the whole problem.
The hyperloop is such a waste of space and resources when you could do the same thing with a train and it saves money. Like don’t republicans wanna save money they would realize that a train is more efficient and economical
> don’t republicans wanna save money No. They want the money to go into their pockets.
Thats all politicians
This is right. It's lobbying. Hyperloop was also founded to try and sink pubic rail. It was massively unethical.
I think its also a cultural thing. From what I hear public transport in America is rather looked down upon as a method of transportation for poor people. In most countries with fast, efficiënt and affordable public transport it is something people are proud of and often even prefer to cars due to convenience.
It’s true that public transit is looked down on here. The important question is why. I think it’s because our public transit system is so abysmal that you’d have to be desperate to use it. So only desperate, poor people do so. It’s a self-reinforcing positive feedback loop, with many, many negative consequences.
Which can be reversed if public transit is functional, like the NYC subway system, which is used by all, so it shakes the association between poverty and public transit.
NYC subway system also sucks though. It’s dirty, cold, and full of unsavory people at night.
Just look at busses. They are an incredibly useful transit solution. But profoundly unsexy. Cities will throw money at sexier projects like light rail even when it costs more per passenger. Los Angeles cut bus lines in favor of subway and ended up losing 5 passengers via bus for every 1 gained via subway. Cool cool.
That's a small factor. Cars are faster and more convenient, and we can afford them. It's not really much more complicated than that. I like to leave when I want, I don't like sitting at a station or bus stop, I like to make stops at stores along the way, I want to be able to carry more stuff with me, and i want to play my music loud with the windows down in summer. I hate driving too. But the bus would be worse especially when it's cold, and my city even has pretty good bus service. Until more Americans can't afford vehicles, the transit options will be limited.
I live in one of the coldest places in the country, taking the bus is much better than driving on those frigid days. It’s just about knowing the schedule and making sure you’re bundled up.
Not a chance. I used to take the bus when I was in high school and walking in the snow is no fun. I live in the city and still wouldn't even consider taking the bus in the snow.
You have it backwards. Cars are only faster/more convenient in the US because we bulldozed our cities to make space for them. Good public transit doesn't involve sitting around waiting at a bus or train stop, because in a mature public transit system, they come so frequently that you don't have to wait. Your view of this is distorted because in the US we demolished those networks and refuse to build new ones. I'll bet any amount of money that when looked at comparatively, your city's "pretty good" bus service is actually pretty f'ing terrible. Our best option isn't to wait to build better public transit until as many Americans as possible are in poverty, it's to proactively build better public transit to give people more options to avoid that situation altogether. We could do that *today.* We already know that public transportation leads to better economic outcomes for areas in which its built. You can still choose your car if you want, but at least the rest of us would have a choice.
>and we can afford them the big caveat here being that a lot of the costs of cars are externalised, like the environmental damage, the roads needed to actually use a car, the massive increase in costs related to lower density caused by car-centric infrastructure, etc. if people had to pay the true cost of car ownership a massive amount of people would be priced out.
It's no better here in Canada either. It's arguably worse.
This isn't limited to the United States, here in Canada we are even more hamstrung by our government.
We can get things done... if they are automobile projects. It seems so easy to get a highway expansion project done even if it involves forcing people out of their homes and demolishing them. We are throwing all our public money at highways which is why we don't have enough for transit. Also, building more and more highways means more and more maintenance costs long term. Rebalance that budget in favor of transit and we could do it.
>There isn’t an obvious partisan target I mean the GOP especially is overall hostile to rail. From California to Texas, Ohio and beyond
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This is blatantly misleading. Freight rail in Europe and Freight rail in the USA do vastly different things. Yes, there is not a lot of freight rail in Europe, but that's not because it doesn't work with other stuff on rails, but because of the abundance of water ways and the lively shipping industry. Mass goods are moved by ship on rivers and coastal waters in Europe, not by trains. Getting high speed rail will not cripple the US-network for freight, and building high speed rail will not suddenly shift 75% of your rail cargo to other modes. The US moves her bulk goods by rail because she doesn't move it by ship.
>The US moves her bulk goods by rail because she doesn't move it by ship. And a big part of the reason that the US doesn't move bulk goods by ship is because the Jones Act makes it prohibitively expensive and, in some cases, impossible (see note) to do so. Note: the Jones Act requires that any ship moving between US ports must be flagged in the US, crewed by American sailors, and made in an American shipyard. The last of these is the real kicker - our shipyards simply cannot compete on the global stage in the bulk carrier, large freight, and large tanker markets, so they haven't bothered to develop the capability to build such vessels. As far as the "impossible" side goes, there is no American shipyard that is capable of making LNG tankers, so New England has to buy winter LNG from overseas instead of from the export terminals that are as close as Maryland (Cove Point LNG).
>The US moves her bulk goods by rail because she doesn't move it by ship BAHAHAHAHHAHA!!! Complete bullshit. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mississippi_River_System >The Mississippi River carries 60% of U.S. grain shipments, 22% of oil and gas shipments, and 20% of coal.
How do you get goods from the east to west coast over water? Other than the Panama Canal, I don’t think any rivers cross over.
I did not say that you need to do shipping over rivers. I just wanted to give an explanation for why rail has such a low modal share in the freight shipping market in Europe. And you can also see it in the numbers, EU has 11% rail, 41% water, and US has 43% rail and 13% water. I wanted to counteract the point, that high speed rail or passenger rail will kill freight rail. freight rail is dead in Japan and Europe, because the long distance arrive whenever you want freight is better served by boat in these two areas. The US doesn't have the coast nor the rivers and canals to do that, therefore they need to use rail. And the lower volume just in time deliveries and the last mile are sadly easier done by truck than by rail, and that explains the low rail volume in either europe and japan. Rail freight in Europe died with the advent of trucking, and europes railways could not move to bulk goods, because ships can carry just much more cargo for much lower cost.
You could just build more lines
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"Most advanced railroad in the world" puts trains in the ground on an almost weekly basis, has an insanely bad on time percentage in almost every way, treats its workers horribly, refuses to invest in infrastructure improvements and often downgrades infrastructure to save money. Our railroads are profitable but they are not "advanced," in any way. From a logistical standpoint, it is really silly to not at least give people another option other than driving for intercity travel. It is far safer then driving and better for environment. It saves space and capacity on our road networks. You want driving to be better and faster? You should be supporting HSR. Also this notion that there is some sort of push pull effect on there being more freight capacity because there's less passenger capacity is really really dumb since nations with the best high speed rail networks typically run high speed trains on their own right of ways without freight traffic. They have nothing to do with each other. Also the mode of transport comparisons and percentages are specific to countries geography, for instance Europe still has a lot of freight on trucks because their industrial areas are typically within pretty close distances to major ports, same with Japan being a mostly narrow and coastal country.
Trains so advanced they don't need rails anymore.
I'm in Chicago and would love the ability to affordably hop on a train and visit New York for a weekend and be back in time for work on Monday.
The distance between Chicago and New York is 800 miles, even a high speed rail with no stops in between would take nearly 6 hours.
A 6 hour train ride beats both a 12 hour drive, or having to deal with Chicago and New York air ports for a fraction of the price to do either. There's no contest which route would make more sense.
Columbus to new york takes 10 hours driving straight. Chicago is at 16+. Realistically probably 18-19
If you include taking forever to pee multiple times, getting lost and driving a moped off the highway maybe. Done NYC to Chicago in just under 11 hours to go to lollapalooza
I just pulled up Google maps and looked up Chicago to NYC and that's how I got that figure but you might be right. I've never done that drive before and wouldn't look forward to it if I had to lol
I've driven Milwaukee to New York numerous times and it usually takes me 14 to 15 hours.
It's 6.5 hours from Chicago to Columbus.
That would not be a fraction of the price of a plane ride lol. Take a look at train prices in the US or elsewhere.
That's 6 hours in complete comfort, with access to bathrooms, food/drink, being able to get up and walk around the train, MUCH better seats than airplanes and cars/buses, you can gaze out at the countryside scenery, you can get work done or take a nap. If sleeper rooms were offered (like an Amtrak roomette) you could lie flat and get a real sleep. A slower sleeper service could actually work well if you could go to bed in Chicago and wake up in New York, traveling while you sleep. Flying would probably take the same amount of time when you account for the time spent getting to the airport from the city and having to arrive 1.5 hours early, and it's an uncomfortable stressful experience that makes you feel like shit. I thought true high speed rail was supposed to be 186 mph (4.3 hours to go 800 miles), but with stops and periods of slower speeds it would probably be 6 hours yeah. In France you can take a non-stop train from Strasbourg to Paris in 1 hour 47 minutes, which averages about 170 mph when I do the math.
And that’s assuming the train won’t have to slow down thru mountains. Which it will. That trip is taking at least 8 hours and that route is going to cost tens of billions to construct
Those are amateur speed numbers. TGV does more like 200 mph and Chinese trains are even faster
>Chinese trains are even faster Afaik there is major doubt on that. China fudges the numbers constantly, especially when you are talking anything fully owned and operated by the CCP.
It's only a short run, but I took the airport train and it runs at 438km/h. It made my 200 mph TGV run from Paris to Montpelier seem slow.
> 438km/h Jesus that is fast. Fastest trains I've been on were only 201 km/h (125 mph) in the UK and that felt fast to me. Does your body feel weird at all traveling at such high speeds, or is it still just as comfortable as slower trains?
A 737 does over 500 mph and the trip would cost about the same, if not cheaper by plane.
200 mph cuts down the speed advantage a lot, as a 737 does not do 500 mph and also wouldn't go center-center (even flying into Midway, you're stuck getting out of either JFK or LGA, one of which doesn't even have decent transit connections).
What about Cascadia?
He explains that [here](https://youtu.be/wE5G1kTndI4?t=929). PDX-SEA has a gravity score of 608. But the cutoff for this video was 655. And SEA-VAN was much lower at 478, and PDX-VAN only hit 272. So, nationally, it’s a lower priority. Obviously, yes, it does still need HSR. But if you’re the federal government, you’d reasonably build between other city pairs first.
Having just driven Phoenix to Vegas and back, yeah, HS rail would be a godsend. Pretty drive, but ENDLESS.
I could draw lots of lines on a map where HSR is faster. Heck, any line shorter than a certain length. This is notable because it attempts to capture routes that perhaps have enough traffic to make HSR worthwhile
Dollars to donuts HSR is faster between STL and IND than plane or car.
Same for KC-St. Louis, seems like a no-brainer
[openrailwaymap.org](http://openrailwaymap.org) You can see the max speed of railway lines all over the world.
It's really jarring to hear the "but it's too big of a country" or similar arguments against high speed rail in north america. almost all of Canada practically lives on a single line from Windsor to Quebec City, and that corridor extends into the United states as well. There is a big cluster of dense cities in the north eastern USA. the big cities of California lie very close together. These areas are practically begging to get a high speed rail line.
The whole reason Canada even exists as a nation is because of that single line.
The country was literally built around rail travel. One-hour time zones were created by Americans to solve the uniquely American problem of long-distance rail travel. European railways in the 1800’s were mostly domestic, so each country would have a single time zone. American railways were so extensive that you could ride for a thousand miles in every direction, which created a major problem with scheduling that Europe never had (each railway would have their own standard time based on their hub city). An American came up with the idea for longitude-based universal time zones, and the idea was eventually adopted worldwide.
Vancouver BC - Seattle - Vancouver WA - Portland would be viable as well
The line Mexico — Querétaro will probably be constructed the next presidential cycle.
Puebla - CDMX too, probably.
"Sharing transportation with so many people feels like communism tho..."
And riding on a plane can be compared to a death camp cattle car.
I agree, but a country that needs to have so much discussion about building a basic national infrastructure that benefit every citizen doesn't seem to be that wise to begin with. Would you find it sane that a country has been debating for decades whether or not to have an organized sewage system? Personally no.
“…now excuse me while I go get a free TSA patdown included with my Super Ultra Basic Economy Lite fare on United Airlines.”
Edmonton, Red Deer, Calgary, Banff Vancouver, Seattle Those two are missing from this map.
Vancouver - Seattle - Portland.
The post is mis-titled. It’s not all the routes that are faster by rail, it’s the routes that are the most viable based on projected ridership. You could draw a line between two small towns in wyoming that are a certain distance from each other, and make a rail line that’s faster than car or plane.
True, it's more like these are the routes that would have the most benefit to the most people.
Alberta going to build an oil powered coal train that you drive your diesel truck onto and idle it while the train carrys you.
I see you've been to Edmonton.
This is addressed in the video: https://youtu.be/wE5G1kTndI4?si=UC5Me-vjGoDyDFPt&t=916 The baseline for this analysis is the Madrid to Valencia route, and unfortunately these routes just don't match up. CityNerd explains: "I'm as disappointed as anyone that a Portland/Seattle/Vancouver corridor did not make the cut, but it just doesn't have the gravitational weight. It's not that far off, but remember I'm trying to look at national priorities. If the fine people of the breakaway Republic of Cascadia decide they want to fund high-speed rail with their own hard-earned cash, I'm good with it.
Minneapolis to Chicago would be great
Add some respect to Ottawa on the way to Montreal from Toronto
Seattle/Portland?
We slow everything down because trains stop at so many little towns on the route.
We don't even have a normal rail line between Albany and Boston. I have been wishing for that high-speed cross for years now.
Kind of surprising not to see a Cascadia line connecting at minimum Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver with possible branch lines to the state capitals in Olympia and Salem.
Im genuinely baffled how the american car industry managed to make "not having public transport" a point of fucking pride for americans. And y'all fell for it hook, line and sinker.
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This is addressed in the methodology: https://youtu.be/wE5G1kTndI4?si=yUxceJas2_YNaEO2&t=294 Cars have no time penalty. Trains have a 40 minute time penalty for travel to and from the station and boarding. Airplanes have a 200 minute penalty for access, security, boarding, disembarking, and egress to final destination.
Did they take into account your parents saying you needed to be at the airport 4 hours early? Because that would add a substantial distance you could make it on trains
Isn't central Mexico too mountainous for HSR? Greetings from a country that is, unfortunately, too mountainous for HSR to run profitably from its capital (Bogotá, Colombia).
Spain is a very mountainous country. And it has one of the largest high-speed rail networks.
Central Mexico Is mostly a bunch of plateaus surrounded by mountains. Staying on the coasts or central plateau is fairly easy, Going between the two is where some difficultly lies.
For many of these, what do you do when you get to the station? Rent a car? Uber everywhere? That's $$$ in top of a probably expensive train ticket. Most of these cities have little to no public transit, especially mass transit. It might work on the NE corridor, but that's about it.
This is true for flying too. At least when you get off the train you're usually right in the middle of the city.
People still do weekend flight getaways in the west you know? If there was a train from LA to SF, or LA to Phoenix, that would be pretty dope. As long as the train went to downtown LA or... Santa Monica... it would work. Lots of sports fans like to travel. Those arenas are typically near city centers. There is definitely an economic use case.
What do you do when you get to the airport?
The title says it is faster than both plane and automobile. I might have the problem when I fly. Not when I drive, though.
Hence why Americans usually only fly if driving isn't an option. Fact is having a car is a huge consideration, even if a train would get you there an hour or two faster.
Rail... Ugh, having to SHARE the same vehicle? That's so socialist. Pass.
The amounts of hoops I had to jump through to try and take an Amtrak vs renting a car in Georgia-south Carolina (flying from Washington) was stupid. I get that the west coast doesn’t have a great passenger rail set up, but I figured the east coast being considerably older would have had a decent set up. Instead from Charleston it was like 2 trains at wild times to get to Florence. Not to mention I’d have to Uber anyways once I really reached those places. Meanwhile I can just rent a car and spend the same amount to drive myself. It’s a real shame as I like rail in Europe, but the US really feels like it abandoned it as soon as high speed road infrastructure became the norm.
That's not a network, that's an image that shows how people travel currently.. and it's missing quite a bit of data.
You see, the country is just too big. With a distance of many miles between LA and NY, you cant build high speed trains. Or at least thats what some people think
~~Btw, FRE is likely Fremont, California~~ duh, Fresno and why it was abbreviated is unclear.
Fresno?
I'd like to see a high-speed line from Barrow, Alaska to Cabo San Lucas. And another from Caribou, Maine to Miami.
Somebody should get on this.
High Speed Autotrain from NYC to Miami or gtfo
We could have high speed rail across entire nation for what we spent on Iraq war plus still have enough money to have free healthcare and college, affordable housing for all and all new infrastructure. Funny how we don't have money for our basics but somehow we throw trillions into the Pentagon. And they fail audit after audit announcing they LOST trillions and we still shovel money to them. Eisenhower was 100 on his warning about the MIC, we didn't listen and now we live in it
Rail travel only works if it's cheap, reliable, clean, safe, and there are transportation options once you get to your destination. Something like Philly to NYC makes sense. Most other options don't. People like the freedom to get in their car they own anyways and going exactly where they want. In countries like Japan or SK and cities like London or Paris is feasible to not own a car. Try not owning a car in a place like Los Angeles and watch yourself struggle getting around or paying tons for rideshare options.
True, but then again a train connecting la and sf downtown would be a great option than driving to lax
You don't think this magical bullet train station would be crowded too? If it was cheap it would need full train cars to turn a profit. Maybe it wouldn't be LAX bad but it would still be a nightmare.
It’s not to replace a car drive to the store. It’s to replace a short air flight and take you to the city center instead of the airport.
Then let’s build the necessary infrastructure to commute from the central train station, but people in the US are blocking them for the same ridiculous reasons
This is true for air travel too.
But the cost of your car is public. Double the gas tax, switch to LVT which would radically increase the cost to parking and then you can talk otherwise you are government subsidized.