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A comment on The World's First 20-Hour Airline Flight. Parent comment

Re:The World's First 20-Hour Airline Flight by echelon on Thursday October 17, 2019 @10:55PM (#21288279)
I really wish we had better rail infrastructure in the US.

Being able to walk around and check out different cars is amazing. Dining and sleeper cars are fantastic.

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Re:The World's First 20-Hour Airline Flight by VLM on Friday October 18, 2019 @07:28AM (#21290379)
Not entirely clear how you'd use rail infrastructure to go from Addis Ababa to DC, so if you need the aviation infrastructure for intercontinental travel, its cheaper to use the same infrastructure for both. Kinda like the classic problem of "why don't rockets use atmospheric oxygen for the first 5% of their flight" well, its just not worth it.

Another BIG problem is urban people think rails go everywhere and connect everything. An interesting geographic feature to google for is "darien gap" in Panama. Most people refuse to believe there is no road connection between north and south America... We don't even have paved roads crossing Panama in 2019... We're simply not going to have high speed rail between the USA and Cape Horn in our lifetimes due to engineering challenges.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darién_Gap

One of those interesting engineer's daydreams is building a rail connection across north and south america. Imagine a really cool bridge across the panama canal.

The problem is there's no market. High speed (human) cargo gets put on the planes because the countries need aviation infrastructure for intercontinental trade anyway. Low speed (metal ore or bulk grain) cargo takes boats which use about half the energy and cost of rail with essentially zero environmental or property tax impact (well, zero compared to rail or road, anyway). So what has to move faster than people but slower than coal... well... nothing, I guess. So no market means no infrastructure.

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Re:The World's First 20-Hour Airline Flight by UserIsUnused on Friday October 18, 2019 @07:57AM (#21290548)
Parent was talking about US, not intercontinental
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Re:The World's First 20-Hour Airline Flight by technofiend on Thursday October 17, 2019 @11:47PM (#21288481)
Indeed. Unfortunately there’s an anti-rail movement that fights any expansion of it, large or small. It’s too bad because between post 9/11 security and airlines adding fees while reducing seat pitch and services it would be really nice to have an alternative.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/19/climate/koch-brothers-pub...

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Re:The World's First 20-Hour Airline Flight by jfim on Thursday October 17, 2019 @11:30PM (#21288414)
As a heads-up, Amtrak is slowly gutting the dining car service, so I'd enjoy it while it's there.

The new "enhanced menu and flexible dining service" is as weasely as you'd expect from the corporate naming.

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