Tokyo to Kyoto one way is 13,080 yen ($120) for the cheapest ticket, for a distance of 226 miles. About the same distance as DC to New York.
A lot of people think high speed rail would be cheaper to flying, in reality it's often the same or more than flying today. And it then costs billions of dollars to build the rail.
As for subways, that unfortunately seems more like a corruption/mismanagement problem in the U.S unfortunately. Our subway systems aren't exactly cheap to build, but are often dirty and late like you say. I would much rather put effort into fixing problems with how we spend the money today, then throwing money at high speed rail.
At $240 round trip, though it's great you could take the train in only 2 hours, it's not as if your average citizen in Kyoto is going to head down to Tokyo on a whim.
> A lot of people think high speed rail would be cheaper to flying, in reality it's often the same or more than flying today.
It's a lot more comfortable, and you end up in a downtown location instead of an airport on the outskirts of the city.
And the only reason train stations are downtown is due to historical reasons. If you had to make a 35 track train station today in your average American city, it would very likely not be downtown. Even in China these train stations are often on the outside loop of the city.
In Seattle, the trains used to run through the city. The corridors are still there, but the new light rail system avoids using them, making it far, far more expensive.
They recently dug a new transit tunnel under the city. The best use for the old tunnel they could think of was to fill it with the rubble dug out of the new one.
The expensive tunnel boring machine was sold for scrap.
I don't understand the thought processes involved in these decisions.
To compare travel times you can easily consider a 2-hour advantage to the train.
You have to start with getting rid of parking minimums and "green space" and building dense, walkable cities. Once you have those it makes a lot more sense to connect them with trains or similar.
I think you mean 30 million. A city of 30 billion would contiguously occupy a continent.
Agreed though that the Acela cooridor is the most reasonable place for the US to invest in high speed rail
The existing track corridor in New England is not appropriate for true high-speed train service. That really requires new right-of-ways, which would be extremely expensive in the Northeast.
There are currently plans for the next version of Acela but it is more about replacing aging equipment than any true speed upgrade. The Acela trains are almost 20 years old but I've never been on one as the price difference from the regular service isn't worth the small increase in time. Here are some numbers. I'm showing the cheapest "Saver" fares which are limited, must be purchased in advance, and have strict refund rules. I just picked November 4 as the date for advanced purchase (about +30 days):
NYC to Washington DC.
Acela Non-Stop: $137, 2h37m
Acela Regular: $137, 2h57m (+20m from non-stop)
NorthEast Reg: $54, 3h25m (+48m from non-stop)
Acela Non-Stop: $144, 6h39m
Acela Regular: $144, 7h5m (+21m from non-stop)
NorthEast Reg: $81, 7h59m (+1h20m from non-stop)
I think the bigger advantage for China is that the decision to run the track on some alignment doesn’t get litigated and re-litigated for years before construction is allowed to begin.
Non-stop is an important element of a truly fast train. Firstly because you don't want to be constantly stopping and starting, but also because you don't want to detour your route through a dozen cities which aren't conveniently on a straight-line route to your destination.
So if you want to make a train run as fast as possible between Boston, NYC and DC, you're telling Connecticut, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and maybe Delaware, "Hey, we want to take a big chunk of your land for our project, and no, we don't want our super-fast trains to stop at any of your cities, and we can't even run a slower train because making the tracks actually go through the right parts of your cities would slow down our fast trains too much."
Have fun with your negotiations!
1. Direct - They have the least stops and are the fastest. They don't go into towns. They go around them. 2. Express - They only stop at the largest towns. 3. Regular - They are the slowest and stop at every town.
You then use timing to make sure that they don't crash. The slow train will generally stop on the track and wait while the direct overtakes it (you don't want them both moving at the same time).
This isn't new. It's be around for 100 of years.
If you have three cities on a perfectly straight line, you can run your high-speed trains as above.
If the city in the middle is not on a straight line path between the two end cities, now your train tracks need to curve to connect the three. If you make the curve a large enough, smooth enough curve, it won't hurt your maximum speed much, but when you're talking "1000 km/hr" ... and in any case, you're also adding miles to your route, and if you make your route 20% longer to weave from city to city along the way, you are also make it 20% slower.
Shanghai’s massive but I don’t think sprawling is really the right word. Where people live is very dense compared to almost anywhere in the US. Even if you go an hour on the metro from the centre most places will be four or more stories high. If you go two hours out there are suburbs resembling what you’d see in Europe but those are for the rich or upper middle class willing to go into a lot of debt.
US style sprawling suburbs do not exist. And it’s density that makes mass transport viable. Central Paris doesn’t really go above eight stories tall and they have their metro. Dublin barely has anything above five stories tall and precious little that high and their tram network is successful.
this is an excuse i have repeated myself, but it is just that, an excuse. have you actually been to china? i have never seen such sprawl. shanghai is massive and sprawling. but yet, they (china) have extremely efficient and unbelievably cheap trains and subways. also, i have never seen a cleaner subway than what i saw in shanghai.
and this excuse doesn't even account for regions like the northeast. the amtrak from boston to new york takes four hours at its absolute fastest and costs couple hundred dollars. this is unbelievably sad. in china, the same ride would take about 1.5 hours and cost around $20 for business class (in u.s. terms, as in china, it's called first class).