I want trains so people can have cross country road trips on the weekend and not have to stay in their small hometown for the rest of their lives
I lived in Connecticut. I used to live in a city outside the capital, with transport available all the time. Then I moved to the sticks, 50 miles away. Same state, just the most rural part.
In a group I did, they showed a woman being a success story from the program. In the video, she was using our bus systems in rhe cities. 4/5 people chirped up and aggreed, "hey we don't have busses in Connecticut this video is fake". I was like, no yeah, we have busses, just not here.
So many people I met in that area, are born, live, work, retire, and die, without ever stepping foot out of their county.
It's sad.
No, sorry, only cities can have trains, because traditional wisdom™©®¹ says the physics of trains literally stop working outside cities.
If you tried to do something like that, youvwoukd risk damaging the fundamental laws of reality! Imagine if, like, the weak force or gravity or the ability for oxygen to form ionic bonds just got suddenly 30% weaker. You train people are such blind mad zealots, that you would risk this.
¹a Chrysler brand!
That's just not reasonably possible in the U.S. If I wanted to go Orlando to Detroit on a train that averaged 100mph without stopping it would take 12-13 hours, not including the trips to and from the train stations boarding etc. To California you'd have to throw another 1,000 miles on to that, so an extra 10 hours. 26-44 hours of travel on a weekend trip sounds horrible. If I were going for a week, sure. (Also a train without stops is hypothetical, it would take longer even if the train could go 150mph)
150mph is pretty slow for a decent cross country high speed rail service. For example the Chinese HSR hits Max speeds of 240mph with the single longest bit of track covering just over 1800 miles so not only is it possible its already been done.
OP means It’s impossible for Americans because we’re just so dumb.
Emotionally dumb. Self gimped in ever way. It's all quite performative of us to collectively fail to accomplish anything as a nation.
So leave Saturday morning say 8, take a train at 9, get there around 9pm, get to your hotel by 10pm go to bed by 11pm get up at 6. Go have your breakfast meeting, leave for the train station around 8 to leave by 9am to get back by 9pm to get home, get ready for bed and go to work in the morning.
That is not a weekend trip to me. That's a sitting in transportation for an entire weekend and not doing much of anything.
Sounds about the same as flying. Took 12 hrs to get from Cleveland OH to Venice FL. Took a redeye to Chicago, had a layover then took a flight from there to Sarasota FL. Left around 2AM and got in around 2PM.
Airplanes travel faster, but the whole system moves slower. Can't say whether a train system would be better though...
Update: for shits and giggles, I looked at getting a ticket to Chicago on our rail system. The fastest route was 10HRs and it involves driving to Indianapolis and taking the shortest direct train from there. To put that in comparison, my drive to Chicago is ~5.5hrs. Greyhound Bus gets me there in 9 hrs.
So no, it's not even close. That's how bad the rail network is here. If you want to get somewhere, you need almost 3x the time to drive, you'd still need to drive for hours, and the cheapest ticket is 55 bucks one way.
High speed rail. Japan's is 200mph.
Musk's hyper loop was a scam but various others tests were 288 mph. Could go higher.
Japan is smaller than California, with several times the population density.
Reframe your thoughts as: taxpayers per mile of track. Then begin to understand.
Japan finds solutions, America finds excuses.
You have enough taxpayers to build 26 lane highways in California, but you're telling me you don't have enough money to build a 2 lane HSR?
Sorry, I'm not American. Looking at it from the outside. There are a lot of things America can do better.
But from a purely math perspective, it's a good metric to explain why Japan has what it has.
They have it because they spent more money on rail and less on highways compared to the US. They chose the better infrastructure.
It's not like everyone in the country needs to ride it daily. The US has plenty of people. You connect population centers. And if you can build on flat land rather than Japan's mountains, you're on easy mode. Really you're the one that needs to reframe things.
It's what the people want. There's been several times where high speed rail in Florida was put on a public ballot, and overwhelmingly got voted for. And then the government came back and said, "wha...we didn't think you'd want this? We don't have the money." The last I was involved in explored high speed from Miami through Orlando and the I-4 corridor to Tampa. Huge potential. "We're a poor state, can't do it." FU FL
Asian high speed rail says otherwise. Check out chinas glow up from 2008 to 2022
I don't think they literally meant journeys from one end of the country to the other, but rather travelling distances of 100-500 km. Maybe even up to 1000 km would be preferable by rail, especially with night trains.
I do agree that if you for some reason specifically want to travel from Orlando to Detroit, plane is by far the superior option. But Orlando to Miami? Or Orlando to Atlanta? High speed rail would be perfect.
The “cross country in a weekend” is a bit of an exaggeration but Detroit to Chicago, Detroit to Minneapolis, Detroit to New York City should be perfectly reasonable for a weekend trip if trains went at a reasonable high speed.
There’s zero reason for train to be slower than automobile.
That's not how it works. HSR could be used to alleviate traffic in dense urban regions, without actual cross-country interconnectedness.
So-Cal, Nor-Cal AND something connecting the two with a couple of stops in between.
Salt Lake area.
Houston - Forth-Worth-Dallas - Austin triangle.
Florida.
Urban areas connecting the Great Lakes.
I won't address the East Coast specifically, as it's quite evident that it'd have needed something around the same time Japan, Europe or China made strides.
Just to do a quick jump over the border, various governments have been attempting to build a HSR in the Windsor - Quebec City corridor for decades, but the political will is simply not there, and we still have the worlds widest and highest traffic highway that costs a fortune to maintain instead (along with the catastrophe that is the 407ETR).
Meanwhile as the latest example, Italy built up a new HSR system by 2015, in an area that is comparable in size and density to Florida. It has a monthly pass system that even allows you to take your bike on every route. It's also a national corporation. How come transit in NA is not allowed to be national, except when it comes to funding roads from tax payer money?
honestly trains that are more affordable than airplanes is super exciting for me
Stupid school holidays ... now the trams only come every 7 minutes instead of 3.5.
I was gonna comment "fuck cars" but then I checked where I was.
Fuck cars.
I grew up with public transit, it was a nuisance when a bus went through every 15 minutes rather than 10.
I want a time machine to go back and yell at myself to appreciate it more, because ever since I left my hometown, I missed it.
Move to Italy
Dirt cheap cost of living
Housing prices like it's 1999
Main line HSR that runs from Venice to Lyons and Milan to Reggio Calibre
You are gonna love Tokyo.
It is going to be hard to do thing like this any time soon in the US & AU because of big oil
Wouldn't it be way easier to implement self driving on a rail system? The trains I take to work are frequently cancelled due to lack of operators.
Not really, because existing track would need to be retrofitted with all of the sensors and whatnot specific to automation. Then there would still need to be a large number of staff available to reroute trains when some run late or have issues, because trying to predict all of those situations is impossible.
Smaller rail systems are frequently automated, like light rail at airports and even some subway systems where minimal human oversight is enough to handle it when things don't work perfectly.
The shortage of operators has a lot more to do with intentionally trying to ruin rail by cutting funding and putting in barriers to working. There are a ton of people who would enjoy being operators if it paid well and was a reliable position.
Yes, there are plenty of driverless train networks around the world.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_driverless_train_systems
Thing is that I live near a city that has this (ok not train travel that could replace plane travel) and I just want to be able to afford to live in it.
Honestly, I want both. I live in Germany and my city has pretty decent public transit. But there are still way too many cars in the city, most streets have parking spaces on both sides, leaving only a small sidewalk. I want people to not be dependent on owning cars anymore. I want personal cars in the city to be replaced by self-driving cabs that you can just order when you need them. Imagine how cool that would be. There would be centralized (underground??) self-driving car storages and if you need a car, you just order one via an app and they just come to wherever you are autonomously and drive you wherever you want to go. You could basically get rid of all public parking spaces, it would be awesome.
--rural areas U.S.A has entered the chat-- We need those trains, the stations they serve, and last mile fully electric self-driving vehicles to get our older citizens to their doctor's appointments in the larger cities, and to and from the fancy train stations, and not have them be made to remember to reserve a seat 3-5 days in advance, and be waiting 45 minutes for a bus to show up to take them where they need to be and then another 45 to get back home. Also, last mile fully electric self-driving vehicles for round-trips to grocery stores around town, TIA.
Neighborhood electric vehicles are available. Rural USA can try electric buses. Increasing numbers of buses on routes will help. USA older folk are very un healthy. They are obese. Many are unable to walk in their own and need assistance. This is mostly unique to USA.
To be fair that's how it is in a lot of countries.
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