As the U.S. fantasizes, the rest of the world builds new transport system (2017)

Re:As the U.S. fantasizes, the rest of the world builds new ... by grecy on Saturday December 22, 2018 @07:24PM (#18743446)

There are plenty of passenger trains in service around the world that go faster than 200mp/h, today.

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Re:As the U.S. fantasizes, the rest of the world builds new ... by bobthepanda on Saturday December 22, 2018 @08:02PM (#18743643)

Those are all in China. Wikipedia tells me that max achievable speed in regular service in every country except China is 320km/h. China does 350km/h, but you need to be traveling at quite a long distance for a measly 30km/h increase in speed to be worth it, and China runs much longer high speed rail services than other countries (Beijing to Hong Kong is 9 hours).

Besides, the more important thing is average speed. Acela's top speed is respectable for legacy rail, but it achieves this top speed for a total of 33 miles over a 457 mile route.

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Re:As the U.S. fantasizes, the rest of the world builds new ... by grecy on Saturday December 22, 2018 @09:58PM (#18744119)

> Those are all in China

You're probably right. America shouldn't aim to achieve speeds of high speed rail in ~2025 that China achieved in ~2015. That's aiming too high.

Best to aim lower so we don't disappoint anyone.

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Re:As the U.S. fantasizes, the rest of the world builds new ... by bobthepanda on Sunday December 23, 2018 @02:22PM (#18747805)

The most painful part of high-speed-rail, particularly at higher speeds, is the land acquisition costs; minimum curve radius grows exponentially as speed rises, so costs escalate as speed gets higher. China cares far less about compensating property owners for fair value, which is why they can engineer such high speed lines in the first place.

We are talking about the difference between 217MPH and 200MPH. The total travel time saved between Boston and Washington by an additional 17MPH is a whopping six minutes with the generous assumption that you start right off the bat at top speed and maintain it the entire trip. If saving six minutes will cost billions or tens of billions of dollars, why bother with such a marginal improvement, when you could spend those billions on literally anything else from housing to healthcare to upgrading the power grid?

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Re:As the U.S. fantasizes, the rest of the world builds new ... by innocenat on Sunday December 23, 2018 @12:24AM (#18744597)

And China pretty much stopped running train at 350km/h.

Steel-on-steel rail is realistically limited to top service speed of 320km/h, maybe 360 at most. The maintenance is just too high when you increase speed beyond that. Newer Japanese Shinkansen line only operate at 260km/h, for example.

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Re:As the U.S. fantasizes, the rest of the world builds new ... by kingosticks on Sunday December 23, 2018 @05:21AM (#18745376)

Yes, but the US just needs a taste to get going. They don't need to aim too high, they should concentrate on delivering something.

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