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High-speed trains are finally coming to the US

It interests me that the amount that Trump wants for Trumps Wall is less money than the California High Speed Rail authority has spent in ten years, a ten years where they have managed to get next to nothing built and a ten years where their ability to make judgments correctly has turned up highly suspect.

Spending money they can manage however.

SEE POST #75
 
Hawkeye10 said:
It interests me that the amount that Trump wants for Trumps Wall is less money than the California High Speed Rail authority has spent in ten years, a ten years where they have managed to get next to nothing built and a ten years where their ability to make judgments correctly has turned up highly suspect.

Spending money they can manage however.
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Yeah that's a good analogy...Billions for a stupid wall as opposed to trains that benefit the public...Welcome to America 2019....
 
Saladin4 said:
Yeah that's a good analogy...Billions for a stupid wall as opposed to trains that benefit the public...Welcome to America 2019....
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Alleged trains, at the rate they are going there will never be any trains, but already $5.5 Billion is gone.
 
Xelor said:
The population density of endpoints is what matters for mass-appeal high speed travel.

Passenger train operators in the US seem given to stopping at myriad locations rather than focusing on traveling at high speeds, in competition with airlines, between major destinations. To wit, between DC and Manhattan the Acela is very competitive with the Delta Shuttle. Door-to-door, the Shuttle is a few minutes faster if there are no hiccups (weather, security lines and traffic). The Shuttle has the advantage that if one's schedule puts one at the terminal in time to catch an earlier flight, one can get on it, whereas with the Acela, one must stop at the counter to refund/exchange a later ticket for an earlier one, or one must buy a second ticket and get a refund for the ticket one didn't use. (Neither is faster than a charter flight, but fortunately most folks don't care to fly that way.)

In any case, trains traveling overland at 300 mph and arriving in the center of the city have a going for them; however, when they stop at interim depots, well, not so much.
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Those end points must be close enough together for their populations to cover the track. That's the problem with the NE Corridor. A massive population in LA and NY does not make a train between feasible. Too much distance. Same with Charlotte and DC.
 
ecofarm said:
Those end points must be close enough together for their populations to cover the track. That's the problem with the NE Corridor. A massive population in LA and NY does not make a train between feasible. Too much distance. Same with Charlotte and DC.
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Red:
What? I don't at all understand what you've attempted to communicate.

Other:
I get that that NY and L.A. (presumably you didn't mean LA) are distant enough that few may want to take a 10 to 11 hour (disregarding time zones) train ride to travel from one city to the other. (Vacation travelers may take such a trip, but modern passenger rapid transportation enterprises like rail lines and airlines thrive on business travelers, not vacation travelers.) I don't know what makes DC and Charlotte too distant. At ~400 miles, it'd be about a two and a half hour high speed train ride.
 
Xelor said:
Red:
What? I don't at all understand what you've attempted to communicate.

Other:
I get that that NY and L.A. (presumably you didn't mean LA) are distant enough that few may want to take a 10 to 11 hour (disregarding time zones) train ride to travel from one city to the other. (Vacation travelers may take such a trip, but modern passenger rapid transportation enterprises like rail lines and airlines thrive on business travelers, not vacation travelers.) I don't know what makes DC and Charlotte too distant. At ~400 miles, it'd be about a two and a half hour high speed train ride.
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Track costs are per mile and a population center only stretches so far. It's not a matter of enough population in each city alone. Daily commutes pay for trains, not intercity vacations.
 
ecofarm said:
Track costs are per mile and a population center only stretches so far. It's not a matter of enough population in each city alone. Daily commutes pay for trains, not intercity vacations.
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Truth be told, I don't care that much whether the train make interim stops between major cities or doesn't. I care that the thing notably bests the Shinkansen Tokyo to Kyoto point-to-point (whatever those points be) trip performance by achieving ~300 miles in 2.5 hours.
 
Xelor said:
Truth be told, I don't care that much whether the train make interim stops between major cities or doesn't. I care that the thing notably bests the Shinkansen Tokyo to Kyoto point-to-point (whatever those points be) trip performance by achieving ~300 miles in 2.5 hours.
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Japan is 10x the population density of the US. One cannot simply connect to population centers; even that density can only extend a track so far. The appropriate locations for passenger rail in the US are few and far between.
 
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