NIMBY-ism as well? Because I can't fathom how a 400 miles high-speed rail route can cost $100bn unless you're spending years re-drafting your route because every asshole on the way has to be heard.
25 years is not completely nonsensical though, if you want to do this right it does take time.
For a fairly recent example, the french LGV Est is 252 miles (406km), it cost 4bn (including 800 millions worth of rolling stock), and took 16 years before the construction and financing protocol of the first phase was signed and the opening of the second phase. First phase opened a year late, and second phase 3 months late because of the Eckwersheim testing accident (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eckwersheim_derailment).
Obviously building in California would require additional studies and expenses for earthquake safety and the like, but 12x… seems a bit much.
The cost only makes sense if it's basically all tunnels and briges, like Chūō Shinkansen: that's estimated to cost north of $90 billion for 177 miles, but it's going straight through mountains, 90% of the way is through tunnels.
Trains are slower in some cases, but the views you simply cannot get from a plane or car.
You can work on a train.
You can get a private cab.
You can get up and move around.
You can go to the viewing car and see the beauty of America.
You can't do any of that in a plane or car. It is traveling in a much better way, even if longer.
Take the Southwest Chief from Flagstaff to Colorado routes and you'd be amazed at how pretty New Mexico is, the deserts of Arizona and the mountains in Colorado. Take any of the coastal lines. You will simply be blown away.
The great thing about trains or infrastructure like fiber across America maybe, people will see govt/business in action. It will build platforms of market value that people can see, people in small towns, people all around.
People need visuals just like clients need visuals to see progress, even though lots of the work is not visible maybe in code or other areas.
The time to train is now. In a way it is the last chance to really get it going before everything is full.
We have been robbed of amazing train rides and views. Take any of these routes/lines and tell me you don't enjoy the views. [1]
Before you vote on anything related to trains, go take one on our underfunded Amtrak routes. It will change your mind if you are not for it. Imagine if we did this right.
Trains use much less fuel, help make pricing for cars/planes competitive and more. Having a third major transportation option besides a bus is needed as we get more packed in.
Trains are less of a threat. Attackers can only really cause damage on a train to a section and maybe a derailment.
Plane terrorism is broader. With a plane everyone is at risk and the plane could be used to attack other things.
Train terrorism is limited. A train can't be taken off course. A train can't be all blown up. Even a massive derailment only affects a section. An attack would be a tragedy but it has rails so to speak on the reach of the damage. Maybe if they blew it up over a bridge or by a building in a city it could cause more damage or some other trigger like causing another disaster. You to have the threat of people setting explosives on the track. There was one of those in 1995 in Arizona where 1 died and 78 were injured, supposedly the attackers were avenging the Waco Siege. [1] Looks like that is the only terrorism event on trains in the US. [2] Subways and metros are probably more targeted in the city.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1995_Palo_Verde,_Arizona_derai...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents_in...
This is no way in comparison to train travel. There's no "dining car" on the train. There's no tables for business meetings. There's no 2 to 4 bathrooms per car. Sleeper rooms are much cheaper and accessible than on planes, but sure, you can pay a multiple of $10k for a room on beyond-first-class international flights.
But even if I granted you that in the old days, you could show up 30 minutes before the flight, walk pretty much straight to the gate, you're still ignoring much more time spent getting to the airport, and time spent waiting for takeoff and baggage loading/unloading.
Major airports are generally located outside cities and near water if possible, train stations are usually located in the heart of the metro area. Sure, there are exceptions like Las Vegas, but in general, most people have to spent 45mins-1hr just getting to the airport in the US.
No one's saying you should use train travel for DC to SF. But come on, NYC to DC, or SF to LA is a no-fucking brainer. When you drive from SF to LA, most of Route-5 is straight land on wild open, flat prairie, and the main difficulty is when you hit the mountain range past Bakersfield, which every advanced country, be it the French, Swiss, Germans, Japanese, Chinese, already deal with, on far more harsh terrain.
There's zero excuse for the opposition to high speed rail for regional intercity, except for a stubborn, weirdly political opposition to trains, which George Will kind of outlined (accidentally) in a piece attacking trains as "socialist" but somehow air travel as "non-socialist" despite the fact that the Feds and States have funded aviation infrastructure to the tune of hundreds of billions over the decades.
For me, driving the west has been life changing. I wish I could convince my friend to give it a go. They would get a lot out of it.
In that time I would start to work (on the clock), just "sleep in" or work on hobby projects.
In the same time a friend of mine in the bay area manages to travel 20 km to the office.
As much as I hated commuting ... I'd take commuting by train over commuting by car every day.
I think it leaves Flagstaff really early in the morning - and it's not worth mentioning Flagstaff to LA or LA to Flagstaff because those trips are only scheduled for the middle of the night.
They could run them more with more routes and funding. On the way back to Flagstaff it was later so maybe they already have some additional times.
It would be nice to see LA sections during the day. But that is another benefit really, you can sleep easier on a train than you can on a plane or car, especially with a private room/car.
What happens if people don't want a railroad through their property at all? After all, once a railroad is sitting on your land, it's difficult to repurpose it for much else. The state can try eminent domain, but that takes time and lengthy court cases, and the costs add up quick.
To put it in perspective, the only all season transcontinental route is the southern most line on the article’s map. It only exists by virtue of the Gadsden Purchase in 1854. The right of way is controlled by the corporate successors of the Southern Pacific.
The non-existence of viable alternative all season grades across the west is why the Gadsden Purchase happened. The US had assumed surely such routes existed in Alta California following its succession in 1848 via the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.
That's exactly what happens. Not because of NIMBYism but because it's run by consultants on cost plus, T&M, or percentage contracts. They have no incentive to finish the project. And in fact are financially rewarded for making the project more expensive.
The LGV route is a far more open and "flatter" (relatively speaking) than LA to SF. There's way less for them to tunnel or grade, which gets expensive quickly. HSR requires more gentle changes in direction than traditional rail. Building on flat, open terrain that no one is using is great... but that kind of terrain is already in use or owned by someone. Thus, easements or having to outright purchase the land. If not and you go for cheap land, it's going to come with downsides, like being mountainous.
At that, France sees less than 10 earthquake events over 2 magnitude a year on average. In the past week, there were already 6 events over 2 magnitude between LA and SF alone: https://www.cisn.org/map/index.html An LA to SF line is practically on a fault line. Devastating earthquakes are a real reality for a Cali line, not so much for France. The Cali standards for building rail are going to be higher than France, and for EXTREMELY good reason. Thus, price goes up for construction.
There's a lot more at play to building these things. What I mentioned barely scratches the surface to the complications. Claiming NIMBY is pretty naive if you don't take into consideration the real world problems and needs to achieving something compared to the lofty, idealistic wants of a project.
It's funny how the same complaints tech folks make of the construction industry are in parallel with what construction folks say of the tech industry. Both are based off ignorance. I have the pleasant curse of having a foot in both fields.
Real world construction is far more complex and difficult than what you imagine. Wide sweeping statements like, "incompetence of the construction companies and their governmental overseers" stinks of you having an cartoonish armchair understanding of what it actual takes from visualized computer renders to a real standing structure. Because civil engineering in the modern age has been a total failure, har har har. Honestly, it's people like you that are easily persuaded to vote for abolishing OSHA on the grounds to hasten construction times and lower costs. Because guess what, Cali construction costs are pretty high due to safety regulations. This is where... oh God forgive me for saying this... I agree with a lot of Cali construction code even though it can be excessive at times, it's warranted a lot of time. Especially because some of it is set for their specific region's character of obstacles... almost like local authorities know best and should enact laws how to construct depending on their local area's nuances! They shouldn't base their construction methods on regions from the other side of the planet!
In the Seattle metro area, about 100 miles of low-speed light rail has cost $75.5 billion so far. Building infrastructure in the US is just inherently more expensive than in other countries. It is a political problem, and unfortunately, only has political solutions.
In France, the railroads are nationalized. A new high speed line doesn't incur the similar costs for right of way acquisitions.
[1]: http://blog.amtrak.com/2019/05/why-are-amtrak-trains-delayed...
And most of the cost of tunnels is the requirement for emergency access and ventilation; the small demonstration tunnel in Vegas lacks these features, and so was cheaper.
To compare, the Gotthard Base Tunnel in Switzerland requires emergency cross connections every 325m and access shafts to the surface. The cross connections are perpendicular to the main tunnel and short in length so they have to be dug out more or less with workers anyways. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gotthard_Base_Tunnel#/media/Fi...
Oh crud Hyperloop finally makes sense to me.
But, yes, I've been in a Concorde (not flown in one) and the seating is, at best, modern domestic--non lie-flat--business class.
I actually think this is something that a lot of modern supersonic travel fans miss. If you're willing to spend the money that supersonic travel will cost you can travel very comfortably. And 12-24 hours of time spent relaxing comfortably is not actually a problem for most people.
There were definitely other problems (the aircraft was a dinosaur, with parts no longer made and a three-person crew; there was no reasonable replacement program on the horizon; the fuel costs of supersonic were hard to justify with the oil prices of the 2000s) but yeah, at some point Concorde's proposition became less and less appealing.
FWIW the biggest supersonic contender these days, Boom, is specifically targeting room and per-mile costs for a modern business-class cabin of 50 people, which is a lot more workable from a business perspective. That being said, the money is not really in transatlantic (where you can sleep for 6-8 hours anyways) but in transpacific, because 12+ hours in a plane is a slog no matter how comfy the seat is.
It does mean that non-stop from LA to San Jose would be right out though. Being conservative and assuming a 300km/h vehicle, you'd want at least 3 stops along the way if people are completely trapped in the vehicle without even being able to stand up, much less relieve themselves.
The bathroom is an obvious problem, and it also ties into problem # 2; the Americans with Disabilities Act. Cars and even minivans are not compliant with ADA without very expensive modification. Airplanes can afford long dwell times and dedicated personnel for people with disabilities, but as designed Boring Company/Hyperloop stuff can't accommodate this in a reasonable way.
https://www.indy100.com/science-tech/elon-musk-boring-compan...
Interestingly enough, rail is competitive in the opposite direction from Portland, namely to Seattle, and Seattle to Vancouver. SeaTac is far enough away from both Tacoma and Seattle to be a slog from many parts of the metro area, and the sole highway corridor gets very congested. And it mostly consists of lots of small investments to the existing route, like a $181M bypass that shaved ten whole minutes off of a 3h30 trip, a 6.7% improvement in travel times.
It's most likely these types of smaller improvements that Amtrak will be seeking, and other bang-for-the-buck improvements like electrification. (Even on the same track and same speed limits, electric trains offer better acceleration than their diesel counterparts, which is similar to what we're now seeing from the electrification of cars.)
Lack of high speed rail is an orthogonal issue, and is constantly conflated with fixing the current state of affairs. we don't even have standard passenger rail yet! We need to build more cheap track to connect areas first.
Rail travel is far more efficient than flying, both environmentally and economically. Flying is heavily subsidized in ways that rail is not, and that tends to hide the externalities.
Rail has also been set up to fail with metrics like direct profitability, which is entirely not the point of public transportation. It's like claiming the entire value of a road is the toll money it generates.
It's unfortunate, but this is probably the way it should be.
Economically the repeat customer should probably get the benefits of predictability / stability.
Also, passenger commuter lines do stick closer to schedule than long-distance trains.
When I've traveled amtrak, the first time I was surprised to have such unpredictable times, but after that I just factored it in. Most long-distance amtrak travel is for the scenery and the pace, not for private-jet-efficiency.
So to say the economic part is not obvious one has to be willfully ignorant of government spending, just listing the obvious source of government subsidy there are many other less obvious one including special tax exemptions, and many other programs that have indirect benefits to the industry
[0] https://urbanreforminstitute.org/2019/09/transport-costs-and...
I find it amusing that in this thread if I make a statement opposing government funding of trains people point out that Airplanes get government funding, and if make a comment opposing government funding of airplanes people point out that trains get government funding
It seems that the 2 groups are completely unable to fathom that a person could simply oppose government funding of both Planes and Trains....
Neither Amtrak nor Air Travel should get ANY tax payer money, for any purpose or reason..
It's this mentality that is exactly the problem. If a public transportation system can pull a profit that means it's actually creating value for people in excess of the resources that it took to create.
If you look at the best public transit systems in the world most of them are either for profit corporations or explicitly chartered to generate revenue (MTR/Comfort Delgro in sg, MRT in hong kong, tokyo subway). I'm aware that MTR recently got nationalized, so we shall see if the quality remains.
This also neglects the question of positive externalities attached to public transportation systems that aren't accounted for in a profit / revenue metric, such as lower property prices, more flexible labor markets, and the quality of life improvements of mixed use zoning that high use public transportation facilitate.
When the Colorado Plateau snows in - as it does about every winter - a bus to LA can simply detour south toward Phoenix.
Which is exactly the reverse of the old days when freight waited.
Also many host railroads only maintain some sections of roadbeds to freight standards, so passenger trains must slow to freight speeds.
https://www.bts.gov/content/train-fatalities-injuries-and-ac...
91 rail collisions (not just with cars, but of all types) for trains (not just passenger trains) in 2020 nationally.
That’s...pretty rare.
From Salt Lake City heading west the first metro of more than one million is Sacramento a thousand kilometers away. In between is nothing but mountain ranges running north south. The little ones only nerds and locals can name. The big one, the Sierra Nevada, which most Americans will vaguely allude to as “the Rockies.” Despite the Rockies being five hundred kilometers to the east of Salt Lake City.
Even further on the other side of the Rockies sits Denver 800 km away. It's the closest million plus metro to the east of Salt Lake. Again across north south mountain ranges.
That’s 1800 km of mountain traversing rail line that only serves Salt Lake City. And it’s still almost that far - 1600 km - to Chicago...and a mere 1200 km to New York City.
The US is vast. Europeans don’t have practical rail from Helsinki to Athens. Or Berlin to Baku. Both significantly shorter than NYC to San Francisco.
National passenger rail isn't politically viable in the US because passenger rail is an absurd approach in most of the US.
The west and the midwest are most of the US.
So really, it's just your concern that is important to you. There's no "we" in it. Only what benefits you.
If you think intercity rail is a great idea, you don't need the US Senate. Just your own local and state officials to boldly pay for it with your own local and state taxes.
Draw the line with them, not with me.
The problem isn’t that some states won’t go along. It’s that you think of Hawaii as owing you fealty. New Mexico as obliged to pay tribute.
The problem is that geography and history make the US unsustainable over the long term. There’s no “Plymouth Rock therefore California.” No “Jamestown therefore Santa Fe.” No “Mount Vernon therefore Maui.”
> The problem is that geography and history make the US unsustainable over the long term.
Here we agree, which is why the US should build several dense intercity rail networks within its borders which will eventually serve as skeletons for its balkanized successor states :)
I suppose you consider federalism itself to be "war upon the locals". That ship sailed (or perhaps burned and sank) when the Articles of Confederation were replaced by the Constitution.
continual underlying appeal as the alternative to self control
If I could only just control my compulsive, pathological desire for decent-quality intercity rail travel in densely populated regions...
The problem isn’t that some states won’t go along. It’s that you think of Hawaii as owing you fealty. New Mexico as obliged to pay tribute.
By that logic, taxpayers in New York have been paying fealty to Texans in the Fort Worth area (via the Lockheed F-35 construction facility) for years.
The southernmost route traverses the mountains of the Basin and Range physiographic region.
There are a handful of routes in the US where Amtrak is currently competitive. As others have mentioned, these are mostly in the Northeast Corridor. Amtrak should be investing in improving these, but instead treats them like a cash cow to fund unprofitable routes elsewhere.
There are also a few routes that, with a little bit of investment, could be competitive. LA to San Diego is one example -- they're the #2 and #8 largest cities in the US, only 120 miles apart, and one has notoriously bad traffic. The biggest problem with current service is that some sections of the route share a single track for both directions of travel, which can lead to cascading delays. They're fixing this, but because there's so little funding, it's going to take 30 years just to lay a few dozen miles of track alongside the existing track. It would seem like a no-brainer to prioritize this.
But because Amtrak requires congressional funding, and no member of congress wants to be left out, you end up getting grand plans that touch every state in the country, and you have to add routes that have no chance of being successful just to get enough votes. Eyeballing the map, it looks like the only state in the continental US without a stop is South Dakota.
This ignores the existence of climate change. Air travel is not sustainable and air travel is least amenable to conversion to hydrogen or electric.
As you mention, the chief barriers to HSR in North America are political and bureaucratic, not practical. What's missing, then, is the political will to do hard things.
Governments used to be able to do things, when the situation demanded it.
Aviation accounts for 9% [1] of US transportation co2 emissions (and as they're emitted at high altitude, impact is likely more like 13-14%)
[1] https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/fast-facts-transportation-...
https://ourworldindata.org/ghg-emissions-by-sector
Energy usage for industry is 24%
Road travel is 11%
It seems aviation’s 2% is not the low hanging fruit.
There is no low hanging fruit. We need to address every sector. No individual solution is going to cut more than a few percent of total carbon emissions.
A buddy of mine worked for a startup a few years ago that promised to go into large plants and do some trickery with the harmonic losses with the very large AC motors in a lot of the big equipment. Apparently there is a lot of losses in such things. They would install equipment to improve the situation in exchange for a portion of the energy savings over time, which was considerable.
Is the same solution that cuts down on carbon emissions in making steel going to cut emissions when making fertilizer?
Few people want to be stuck on a passenger ship for weeks at a time, their objective is not to be sitting on a ship. It would make international travel completely infeasible for all but a minority. No one would be able to do simple things like visit family if it required a month or more of round-trip transit time.
Society has been organized around jet travel. It can be reorganized around the reality of international travel requiring large time investment.
An argument of "but climate change" is tone deaf and not very compelling when it is you getting thrown under the bus for the Greater Good. Economic realities can't be ignored when they are inconvenient.
The economic effects of climate change will be more catastrophic than making it take longer to move internationally, something that very very few people actually have a need to do.
Addressing climate change in anything more than a performative way will require massive increases in global industrialization, not less. Impactful eco-friendly infrastructure isn't going to build itself. Needlessly making this slower and more difficult than necessary just lends credence to the idea that climate change activists aren't serious about addressing the problem.
The promotion of non-serious solutions to climate change make it much more difficult to get by in from average people for supporting credible and substantive solutions. Which isn't helpful if the objective is to constructively address climate change.
And there's no precedent for the level of global cooperation -- which would have to transcend nation-level political realities -- required for meaningful change.
I'm long on humanity. But not because I think we're all going to wake up and fix the climate in a coordinated manner.
Zeppelins are tres tres romantique, though.
But seriously, why can’t you just tie the zeppelin down? Is there not any sort of cable material with enough tensile strength?
But eventually air travel's time will come, and HSR is the only alternative that's on the table.
It’s completely false, unnecessary, and counterproductive to spread FUD about climate change requiring substantial reductions in quality of life. People are smart and resourceful enough to solve these problems.
Which means you’d have to use hydrocarbon fuel. Which can be chemically produced from atmospheric CO2 and water if you have enough carbon-neutral energy. Or you could sequester an offsetting amount of CO2 if that would be more efficient.
Look at the article’s map. That empty distance between San Antonio and El Paso is nearly 900km of West Texas emptiness. There’s Del Rio and Van Horne as the biggest towns and Marfa as perhaps the most famous.
When last was San Antonio to El Paso an important trip for someone you know?
Also peak oil, a largely forgotten issue. As fuels get more expensive, more efficient modes of travel will become cheaper relative to air.
We may greatly reduce hydrocarbon fuel usage but it won't be because we ran out in my lifetime.
(Musk's Loop idea is basically another iteration of the PRT concept.)
Your thinking is out of date.
That said, the Musk Loop type plans where the cabs/cars only carry 1-4 people - which seems similar to this SkyTran - is obviously inefficient and not really a realistic alternative to cars or mass transit systems.
You only think that because you haven't done the math. Its frustrating to hear people talk about how something is "obvious" when by "obvious" they just mean "I haven't actually put any thought into it.
A single Skytran track has more capacity than 7 lanes of freeway or 3 tracks of light rail. Does that sound "obviously" inefficient to you?
A lane of freeway can move about 1500-2000 people per hour in single-occupant vehicles. If you're moving 2k people/hour in 4-person cars on a fixed guideway, you need to have about 10 seconds between vehicles. That's about 8 seconds for a car to physically clear the switch, the switch to physically move to an alternative position, and then the trailing car to cross the space needed to come to a complete stop should the switch fail to actually work. If you claim 7× the capacity, you need to do all of that in a little more than a second.
So, yes I have "actually put any thought into it." I've put sufficient thought to recognize standard gadgetbahn claims with standard gadgetbahn levels of evidence backing them up, and thus I can respond with standard gadgetbahn criticisms.
From an environmental perspective low speed inter-regional fright rail makes a lot more sense.
Where high(er) speed passenger rail could really shine is intra-regional lines. Granted stops slow things down, but the NYC region commuter lines (LIRR, MMR, NJT) have horrible average speeds.
I understand from friends in greater DC and the Bay Area that the situations there are similar.
The front range of Colorado, for example, had trains everywhere in the late 1800s. It was the way to get between Denver, Colorado Springs, Pueblo, Boulder, Golden, and other cities on the front range.
Now they're trying to build a rail link between Denver and Boulder, and it's costing a fortune and running into all kinds of NIMBYism and bureaucracy.
I'd love to see it, but the way it's going I'm skeptical it will ever beat out the RTD buses.
10 hours of active driving is something completely different than 20 hours being a passenger/sightseer (of which I would spend significant part asleep or reading) In fact I don't think it's safe to drive for 10 hours, you probably need to add several hours of rest, and will still be half zombie after that.
At some point the train becomes attractive. It's certainly a much less stressful option.
That said I must agree American trains are in poor shape compared to other places.
Well-marked, well-maintained, well-signed, and gradient/curve controlled interstate highways are among the easiest for self-driving vehicles. It's just about possible today (but expensive and in some ways legally unsolved).
It would be shocking if America didn't have popular, reasonably-priced self-driving highway vehicles in 14 years to do that (14 years used to match the timeline of Amtrak's 2035 map).
And an additional amount of maintenance costs, vehicle depreciation, insurance, etc. Driving might still come out less expensive, but ignoring all the extra costs makes it look cheaper than it really is.
In Japan, I can literally show up for a Shinkansen five minutes before departure and hop right on.
Airports for short range traffic are fscking awful.
* I can’t just show up for the Acela five minutes before departure. It’s not nearly as bad as flying, but there is ceremony involved.
* Security and boarding are a lot better when you are a frequent business traveler. That’s who is going to make the bulk of the DC-NYC trips regardless of modality. We shouldn’t compare the tourist experience between the two.
Last time I went through LAX there were no good options for getting from there to downtown LA.
Contrast that to the TGV in France, which zooms around at 200mph and covered one of my trips between Paris and Avignon (~430mi) in ~2.75hrs about a decade ago. US train infrastructure feels extremely behind in comparison. Perhaps it's because of a greater emphasis on highway travel.
That said, the NYC-Montreal and Boston-Toronto lines are lines that absolutely should be dedicated high-speed passenger rail in addition to the NEC, but they are not even dedicated passenger rail lines at the moment let alone proper 220mph HSR lines.
Roadbeds are maintained to freight train standards, e.g., the difference in height of the two rails.
Amtrak depends on the "host railroads" who are not very hospitable to passenger traffic.
So it seems pretty probable to me that Acela came about because there was already a huge and increasing demand for such a service.
To be honest, when it's my own money I usually just take the regular regional train. It's about half the price and because it can piggyback off the electrification done for Acela, it takes less than an hour more.
On other routes being slow is a massive liability though. If people could get from San Francisco to Portland in 10 hours, or even 12 hours, instead of 18 hours, it would be much more practical. At 18 hours it messes up your sleep schedule rather than just giving you more time to read.
It might just not be worth it to spend more on rail travel from Portland to SF though. It's just a reality of geography rather than somebody's mistake that travel from SF to Portland is harder than travel from DC to NYC.
It's so easy to imagine taking a self-driving sleeper taxi overnight between Portland and Oakland in 10 hours - just throw a bed in the damn thing, go to sleep, and wake up at your destination. Give self-driving cars a dedicated lane with a different speed limit, and you could bomb the trip in 7 hours, easy. It'd all utilize existing infrastructure, we'd just be increasing the throughput.
If the car is electric, it'll be multiples cheaper than the fuel costs of driving yourself, a spiffy van with nice spread out reclining seats could have multiple passengers so the cost could be split further, and it'd probably be 1-2 orders of magnitude better for the environment than taking a flight.
Ten hours by road. Large enough to have sleeper compartments or reclining seats. (Large enough to have restrooms.) Driven by an NI -- natural intelligence -- whose competence is accredited by the state government in a reasonably fair examination of skills. Give a dedicated lane to the bus, and seven hours might be within reach.
Really, the problem is that I see flights between the two cities at $70 per person and 2.5 hours in the air. Even if it takes an hour on each extra, that's 5.5 hours versus 7 for a fairly reasonable price.
All these modes of transportation have pros and cons. How do we get people to take less flights? Busses already exist. Decent fast and cheap trains don't, nor do self-driving cars. Both will help poach people away from shorter flights, but one is (potentially) much cheaper and easier to implement.
I would hope that Amtrak in the long term also electrifies the rail network so that the dependency on diesel engines can be reduced - for some routes this may not make sense, but where you have frequent services it seems that it would be a worthwhile impovement too.
From personal experience (family that lives in Fresno), Fresno revamped downtown to get ready for all this. They cleaned up the Fulton Mall route, pumped a ton of money into the area, realtors were banking on Airbnb housing for all the construction jobs coming in from out of town. Fresno even made a concession to allow tiny trailers to be parked and connected on properties with homes on them already. Then the state shut it down.
Another reason from what I’ve pieced together is that California had so many hurdles to jump through. Namely the environmental reports that had to be made.
Further if that is your "dream" to impose prohibitive taxation on the population I would question your ethical foundation as well
Edit: for the record since someone below is using a straw-man to claim I support subsidies, I dont. I prefer the government stay out it completely, neither taxing nor subsidizing (nor bailing out) anything, or any industry. I am not Pro or Anti Rail, nor I am Pro or Anti Air Travel. I am Anti-Government intervention...
Which BTW under most proposed versions of the Carbon tax is nothing more than a political tool, not a tool to properly account for externalities
Governments do not have a track record for being trust worthily enough to be placed in charge of controlling Externalities, it would inevitably be used to usurp power, and liberty from the people, while unjustly enriching their political allies.
This happens every day, in every government. As the saying goes "Government: if you think you have problems wait until you see our solutions."
What are they? Pigouvian taxes like carbon taxes are near universally endorsed by economists as a market oriented method of improving outcomes.
(Flights barely break even at all, and that's even with the absurd level of subsidies airlines get today)
I prefer the government to stay out of it completely. I prefer the government stay out of everything...
In bankruptcy, assets would be sold off (the planes wouldn't be crushed). Businesses restructured and life would go on. It's extremely unlikely no one would be willing to take air travel, even at higher prices than current (I like flying NYC/SF at $150/flight, but I would do it at $600/flight too).
Seriously? That's the speed of our slowest local regional trains here in Europe. Long distance trains are about twice as fast per km even on a trip one fourth the length and with several stops. If this is a regular state of affairs then it's no wonder that the state of train travel in the US is what it is.
And there are very few reasons to travel from Portland to Oakland on a dedicated itinerary. No critical business relationships. No historic ties. No cultural affiliation.
Comparisons of US rail to Europe usually ignore most of Europe. 18 hours reflects a rail speed comparable to what Google returns for a train trip from Zagreb to Tirana. I'm not sure you can even take a train from Berlin to Baku.
If you drive along I-5 from Portland to Oakland, there is one mountain pass (Siskiyou summit[1]). Most of the trip is very flat, as you're traveling through Oregon's Willamette valley and California's central valley.
> 18 hours reflects a rail speed comparable to what Google returns for a train trip from Zagreb to Tirana
Ehm...I don't believe there's been railway connection from anywhere to Tirana since 2013. Albanian railway infrastructure is largely non-existent at this point. And the only international railway connection to Albania is freight-only. Not quite sure what Google told you there.
Quite simply it runs along the best available route. Down the Willamette Valley to Eugene and then...well it has to make do past Mount Shasta until near Sacramento.
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I'm not going to express faux outrage at the shortcomings of European rail based on the lack of service to Triana. Rather it is to point out that in this sort of discussion of US passenger rail, Europeans tend to ignore a great deal of Europe. More understandable is the misunderstanding of US geography, even in the US people presume similar political geography implies similar physical geography.
Finally, Oakland to Portland is not a major passenger route. Not really even a major rail route since the sea is a viable alternative for freight along the coast and most freight in the US travels east-west.
As for Albania, you know how to pick the one part of Europe where train service is crap - anything from Bosnia southeastwards in http://emptypipes.org/supp/isochrone_zagreb/. Pretty much any other direction is perfectly serviceable and vastly better connected. Apparently you can get sooner to Paris from Zagreb by train that to any of Albania. Is the US west coast due to its geography a similar uniquely bad place?
The US west is mostly empty. When you look at the article’s map even the named places are tiny. La Junta is tiny. Flagstaff is less than 100,000 as a metro. Reno is about half a million. Cheyenne is in Wyoming. The entire state has fewer than a million people.
In terms of European rail travel, I avoided the low hanging fruit like Dublin to Lisbon, Reykjavík to London, or Oslo to Paris.
1. https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Portland,+Oregon/Oakland,+Ca...
2. https://www.amtrak.com/alert/pacific-surfliner-coast-starlig...
With an ECx or ECE it'd be below 8h.
The primary issue I have is that the hours the service runs, the first departure is a little too late to arrive for a morning meeting, and the latest is a little too early to leave the office after 5 - an earlier and later option would make it very viable for one day business travel.
Whilst the US population is generally much less dense than much of Europe, there are large areas (PNW, the northeast, much of California) that definitely have high enough population density to support an extensive rail network. Yes there must be political will to make these improvements, but surely that is true of all infrastructure spending?
For example, I'd like for the train to Miami to skip Orlando and Tampa, and for Brightline to be left to bring service back if it makes economic sense (they're already working on Orlando). If not, there are buses like Megabus and Flixbus. That would shorten the Boston to Miami route quite a bit.
This model already works well along the Northeast corridor. Even the slow, delay-ridden Empire Service (thank CSX for that) ran full trains between New York and Albany(before Covid). Not to mention the main DC to Boston route.
The failure of intercity rail does not seem all that distinct from the general failure to invest in infrastructure in the US, and the enormous costs when the investment is attempted.
Except the NEC is heavily competing against existing air travel between its common destinations. Or are you generally referring to longer distance air travel? (i.e., 2+ hours by plane?)
We are going to need a citation here because I’m pretty sure this isn’t true
1. https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2019/02/12/gavin-newsom-br...
2.https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-09-08/newsom-b...
It does, just not in hyper regressive California.
You could build a full high-speed rail network between Dallas, Houston, Austin and San Antonio for $100-$150 billion.
You just can't build much of anything in California, period, that's the issue. It's a collapsing state in most metrics that matter for quality of life (and has been for a long time), even the venture capitalists can't abandon the state fast enough. As their capital flees, so goes what remains of California (tech). As taxes go far higher this decade, the flight will get worse, Texas and Florida will keep extracting immense value out of California and New York.
First, Amtrak is not a competitive transportation option. It can be a fun novelty, but it's expensive and slow. Going from Portland to Oakland is supposed to take 18 hours but actually took 20 when I rode it. The same trip in a car takes 10 hours. By plane is 90 minutes. It gets worse: Amtrak cost me more than a plane ticket to the same destination.
Second, hundreds of billions of dollars doesn't get you much train in the US. California tried to build a high speed rail route between SF and LA. The estimated completion cost has skyrocketed to $100 billion and the completion date is 25 years after voters approved the project. The state has since given up on connecting LA & SF by high speed rail.
There is simply no future in which passenger rail competes with air travel in the US. Even in circumstances where the distances are not too great, and the political and bureaucratic hurdles are.