My father told me a story about discontinuing a street car line (called an interurban) in a town North of Detroit. There was a hearing at city hall and hundreds of villagers turned out.
Dozens of people made the case to keep the line. Finally the street car company's lawyer got up and made the business case for discontinuing the line. He concluded by asking the crowd how many of you used our company's street car to get to this meeting? Not a single hand went up.
It's easy to tell a pollster you're for high speed rail but how many will actually buy a ticket? Perhaps they should ask for them to prepay for a ticket?
That's the issue with public transportation in the US. Cars, gas, and land are cheap, therefore personal transportation is cheaper than public transportation. When it's more affordable to drive into a city and park for free than take a train/bus and be limited to their schedules and locations, personal transportation wins every time, like in the OP's anecdote. Personally, I think this is a wonderful thing, but I also know public transportation services in other countries are much better at overcoming these problems than in the US.
There are two competing issues, one is what you say, and the other is that public transportation often sucks pretty hard. Some places lean heavily one way, and some lean heavily the other way. My point is that without knowing this context, we don't know if that story is an example of "people say they want public transportation but don't actually use it" or if it's an example of "public transportation is set up badly and then the people who run it are somehow surprised when people don't use it."
>It's easy to tell a pollster you're for high speed rail but how many will actually buy a ticket? Perhaps they should ask for them to prepay for a ticket?
I use the MBTA on a fairly frequent basis. I would use it every day if biking didn't half my commute time.
I've also used Megabus to visit New York City, for day trips even, Acela for an interview in New York once, and a short domestic air flight to visit a friend in Washington DC for a weekend. These costed ~$30, ~$200, and $500 for round trips, respectively.
Note that the bus takes almost five hours, the train takes four hours, and the airline flight took about two to three hours. The bus and train were crossing the same distance between the same two cities, and a comparable air trip would have cost $450 for a 1 hour, 15 minute flight.
Why is the transit system structured so that by taking "high-speed" public transit over slower private transit, I reduce my trip by 20% but pay 9x more? Why is it that if I actually want to travel quickly, I have to take a private transit agency (ie: JetBlue), and can quarter the time spent in transit by spending twice as much as the next-fastest option and 15x as much as the slowest option?
In particular, how can we talk about a so-called "high-speed" rail system in which the gap between driving and taking a train is only one hour but the cost gap is multiplication by nine?
Well, Acela isn't really high speed rail; it only shaves off about an hour compared to the regular train (and costs around twice as much).
But, that aside, Acela is really competing with air. Their bread and butter traveler is traveling on business and they're taking Acela over a plane because they prefer to travel on Acela for a variety of reasons. They don't really care about cost within reason.
Those same travelers won't typically take a bus. If they do, they'll take something like the LimoLiner which is priced in the same ballpark as Amtrak. (I tried it once and didn't like it as much.) However, regular buses are always going to be the cheapest option both because they're typically competing for price-sensitive customers and they can take advantage of a a road network that already exists and that they don't need to maintain (other than whatever taxes they pay).
Right. Having train travel target business travelers who are neither price-sensitive nor particularly time-sensitive is a choice -- a political choice. For instance, when we say that buses "can take advantage of a a road network that already exists and that they don't need to maintain (other than whatever taxes they pay)", that doesn't mean the infrastructure doesn't need to be paid-for, it means someone other than the transit supplier is paying for it. Why do we suffer this delusion that Amtrak should have fewer eminent-domain rights and take in fewer tax dollars than the highway system, and then act surprised that nobody takes Amtrak?
It's like complaining that fruit trees die when you refuse to water them.
But lots of people take Amtrak in the Northeast Corridor--enough to subsidize the rest of the system. The problem is that there aren't any other areas in the country that are as well-suited for busy inter-city rail as the Boston to DC corridor. Almost everything else is lower density and further apart.
I'm not an expert on transportation cost structures but my observation in most places in the world is that, given a decent highway system, buses are going to beat intercity trains every time when it comes to price.
The problem is that there aren't any other areas in the country that are as well-suited for busy inter-city rail as the Boston to DC corridor.
A lot of money's being pumped into trying a high-speed rail corridor between Los Angeles and San Francisco. And to be honest, I'd think there's at least a moderately good case for running up to Portland, Seattle and possibly even Vancouver. There's an awful lot of tech-industry commuting by air on those routes right now.
They're not as well-suited because the distances between the major cities are greater. And LA is so spread out with horrible traffic once you get there.
But, yes, the West coast corridor is an obvious candidate if the idea can be made to work anywhere in the US. (As is upgrading the Northeast Corridor where demand is already proven.)
Given that buses usually don't beat rail in speed terms, and are usually less environmentally friendly, the only real reason for buses to exist is price. If they can't beat rail on that they simply won't run.
Acela isn't "high-speed" rail, it's basically normal rail with high-speed hardware which occasionally goes fast enough to barely clear the threshold for calling it "high speed."
Acela averages less than 70MPH. In a proper high-speed system that would be more like 180MPH. Boston to DC would be 2.5 hours, vastly faster than flying once you account for airport nonsense.
While I agree that more high-speed rail would be amazing in the US as a viable transit option, a lot of the calculus around efficiency of it rests on it being exempt from the likes of TSA. TSA has been making their way into train stations for a few years now:
> TSA has been making their way into train stations for a few years now:
Yeah, 'Amtrak police' are now also doing their own 'random' inspections and swabs, etc. Last few times I took the Amtrak from Penn Station they were doing this.
Yet another reason for me to take the bus (which is 80% cheaper, as long as they're not sold out).
In a proper high-speed system that would be more like 180MPH
The current record for highest average speed on a rail line is China's 176mph average Shijiazhuang-Zhengzhou. Prior record holder was 173mph on the Champagne-Ardenne to Lorraine run on the LGV Est corridor of the TGV.
All high-speed rail systems have stretches where they go faster than that, but average speeds are nowhere near what you're proposing. Unless, of course, your argument is that no "proper high-speed system" exists anywhere in the world today.
I mean "nowhere near" in the sense that the outliers -- the current and previous record holder for average speed -- haven't managed to crack your proposed 180mph criterion for "high speed", and the non-outliers definitely aren't coming close to that number. Common definitions of "high speed" rail kick in at 200kph or 250kph, which are 124mph and 155mph respectively.
Even if we go with the higher of those numbers, that's still around a 13% minimum difference in average speed between what's accepted and what you're proposing.
(for non-Americans, what I'm arguing with here is the idea that ~290kph would be the minimum average speed to call something "high speed rail")
Well that sure is nitpicky but if it makes you happy....
My actual point is that Acela is painfully slow and proper high-speed rail is much, much faster. A 13% difference in the numbers is not really relevant, especially when I took pains to indicate that it was approximate, and never said that was some sort of minimum.
Remember to allow time for getting to/from the airports (which typically are a bit of a trek from downtown areas), allowing time to check in and clear security.
> the airline flight took about two to three hours
Only if you assume that getting to and from the airport, and getting through security, and boarding, are all instant.
Megabus drop and pickup in Manhattan. Acela goes to and from 34th st. Neither require me to play strip tease or watch 45 minutes of idiotic bin-shoving pantomimes.
The nearest airport to Manhattan is LGA, it takes 30-40 minutes depending on traffic. JFK and EWR are 40-60 depending on traffic. None of them have direct subway or rail connections, so you have to either take a car or cobble together various public transportation options (subway then bus, subway then shuttle, subway then taxi, train then monorail) with frequently unsynchronised schedules.
The idea that air travel is more convenient than the Acela train in the NE corridor is just silly.
Personally, I prefer taking the train in the Northeast Corridor but:
1. There is a regular train from EWR right into Penn Station
2. Even though the train is more convenient in a number of ways, flying can get me from Boston into Manhattan earlier in the day than the train. Usually doesn't matter, but it may if you have a morning meeting and can't come down the previous night.
3. Although I've taken it, the Acela all the way from Boston to DC starts to not make sense vs. flying--and tends to cost more as well.
What's "infrequently"? Has it changed recently? I used to have to DTW-NYC once or twice a week, and I always routed to EWR because I knew I'd just be a quick train trip to Manhattan. I don't remember ever waiting very long.
I hate the monorail at EWR with a passion - the slow speed, the long stop at a parking garage before the terminal, the insane loop round some kind of junkyard/parking lot it takes on the way to the railroad station, but all told it's still only about 10 minutes at worst.
They have one of those at SFO also and it's not exactly fast. That said, it's a big improvement over the prior shuttle bus to the rental car center--though the BART connection I usually just take that if I'm going into the city in the vicinity of the convention center.
The one at SFO is pretty standard. What's irritating about the one at EWR is that it's so unecessary. The loop seems like it's there because they couldn't get somebody to accept the supporting pillars in their precious car yard, and the general speed is a bit less impressive than the monorail to the space needle in Seattle.
There are plenty of places where the pitifully bad systems that already exist are not just used, but used to well beyond their capacity.
Like... SF and environs, where the rail-based transit systems are basically all running hobbled all the time due to being way over capacity and way past expected lifetime of equipment. Caltrain just reported weekday ridership is now around 62,000, for example, but is struggling to replace 25-year-old equipment that breaks down on an almost weekly basis.
SF rail transit is very good by US standards. The system is old and worn out, but it takes you where you want to go in a reasonable amount of time. Which is, after all, the point.
Its also a question of pricing. No point in launch a shiny new transportation tech when its priced using price skimming.
Much better approach (for society) is to launch it with a super low discounted price until its gained some mindshare and people had a chance to evaluate it in the context of their routines.
This tale reminds me of the scene in the movie Singles, where the protagonist is working to create a new train, but is denied by the mayor because he knows that "people love their cars".
Years ago I thought the idea of regional high speed rail lines in the US was a great idea, but I think the time for that has come and gone. The future seems to be clearly moving towards autonomous cars (and buses one presumes). Why sink billions into high speed rail when on our current pace it will be only a couple decades before we have all electric cars powered by solar and other clean energy sources that are 90 something percent autonomous? I think most people would easily choose a 5 hr autonomous car ride from LA to SF with complete freedom of movement in both cities compared to a 2 hr train ride with possibly a couple hours in both cities dealing with connections getting you to your specific destinations.
I do wonder what would happen if they built a new double lane highway between two cities that is only usable by autonomous vehicles? How fast do we trust autonomous vehicles to go?
In a fairly straight line and in good weather? Very fast (compared to current US highways). 150 mph or more.
The primary factor I can think of in terms of risk, are wild animals crossing and vehicle malfunction (eg tire rupture). Censors/radar, both in the vehicle and along the perimeter, should take care of the animal threat. On the mechanical side, well, the goal would be to get the rate of death down to perhaps airline-like numbers.
A fence and over/under animal crossings would probably deal with the non-flying animals. Birds require a bit of intervention sometimes.
I wonder if anyone has done a paper on how fast / how dense you can drive automated cars while maintaining a decent safety margin.
Also, different makes of automated cars are going to be a pain in the butt for the system. I'm sure the Kia and Ferrari are going to want to go different speeds.
This completely excludes "walkable cities" out of the equation. If everyone is moving around on their autonomous vehicles that means that the entire city is criss-crossed with wide roads that take up tons of space, instead of dense walkable city centers with big transit corridors.
I lived next to a commercial area. You'd think it would have been very walkable with a grocery store across the street, a rec centre just a block away, and tonnes of useful businesses. But the biggest problem I had walking anywhere was the vast amount of surface parking surrounding every business. It was a few minutes just to walk across the grocery store parking lot.
Autonomous vehicles would mean valet parking for everyone, which in turn means that we don't need to surround every business with vast fields of parking spaces. Yeah, the parking needs to still go somewhere, but at least you can put it off in a corner somewhere and most of it can be walkable.
The personal autonomous car is just the first, simplest version of the autonomous vehicles.
It won't be long before much smaller, short-distance, rentable systems come out -- self-balancing cycles that convert to cycle-trains, and so forth.
As autonomous vehicles makes roads much safer, two-wheel systems that are currently too dangerous will become much safer, and much more desirable.
As people are less inclined to own their own vehicle, and as delivery systems are more common, there will be less incentive to own a large car. People will rent two-wheel autonomous bikes instead of four-wheel autonomous cars, if its going to cost half as much.
I think it would be ideal to have it all. Autonomous cars acting as taxis for cheap when you arrive in a city and also high speed rail lines as alternatives to flights to get to another city. Autonomous buses will basically be the new electric street cars. Do their route, stop and plug themselves in to charge, then off to take over a route when needed.
That will happen. What's going to be difficult is the high speed rail to compete against the airlines. I would really prefer an alternative to air travel myself. I hate it and the type of people that seem to be in airports from security to passengers.
Be weary of statistics asking people what they might do if something were available vs what they actually do when it's there. Because then you have to factor in the schedules, the ticket price, etc. It doesn't cost anything to answer yes to a poll, it's a bit more complicated when it's time to plan a trip and shell the money out.
I'd prefer a more modest speed rail that went from where I am to somewhere I want to go. It does no good at all to travel at high speeds somewhere else, when all that saved time is more than lost trying to get from else to where I want to go.
I'd even prefer slower rail to my car, because I can read on the train, and I don't have to spend 5-10 min parking.
> To be more exact here, 63% of those surveyed stated an interests in utilizing high-speed rail service if it was available.
That's asking the wrong question, though. The issue is not so much whether people would, in the abstract, have an interest in using high-speed rail as a hypothetical means of transportation. The first challenge is figuring out where to place the rail - trains can only travel on tracks, so the train routes need to connect highly-trafficked (source, dest) pairs in order to be useful. And the second challenge is figuring out how to do this for a price that justifies the costs. (Even if the project is taxpayer funded, the costs include the opportunity cost - what other projects that tax money could have been spent on).
Two-thirds of Americans would use high-speed rail if it connected their home city with their most frequently-visited destination city. But that's not the same as saying that two-thirds would use high-speed rail if it connected, say, LA and SF, or NYC and DC. The question is, would enough people use those routes in order for the project to justify its costs?
The question isn't entirely useless - for example, if only 1% of the country demonstrated an interest in using high-speed rail, we could probably stop there. (Even if it connected NYC and LA, the two largest cities, there's no way the traffic would cover the opportunity cost of the project). But as stated, this survey tells us pretty much nothing new - we already knew that there's an abstract interest in high-speed rail, but what we don't know is how to convince people that we have a cost-effective way of building out the tracks between the most-important destination hubs[0].
[0] We sort of do know what the most-important destination hubs are, because it's not that different from the most-trafficked Amtrak routes and flight routes in a given region. Yes, you can make the argument that high-speed rail rail should serve the areas that aren't currently well-served by other transportation means, but keep in mind that those also tend to be the less-populated areas to begin with, which means that the challenge of recouping the costs of the project is even greater.
DC-BAL-PHL-NYC-BOS is already a heavily trafficked rail and air route. If high speed rail showed up competitively priced with airfare and without the hassle of getting to/from the airport and going through security it would be used a lot.
Some plans have quoted a time from BAL-DC of about 15-20 minutes. That would make it an extremely popular commuting option for people working in DC, but wanting the cheap housing in Baltimore, which would also help Baltimore (although at the cost of probably making it not-so-cheap anymore).
Replacing short-hop flights would also be great for the environment, since most of the fuel is burned getting up to altitude and then back down again.
This. Rail is great for roughly linear population distributions (like Japan or California coast), but understand the USA had a huge 2D spread - laying out a vast rail grid is a lot harder than roughly a line. Each terminal had the same problem, as travelers are moving to/from in all directions. My own case: 2 miles to the nearest bus, then 20 miles to the subway, then 15 miles to what would be the high speed long range rail terminal - then a similar reverse sequence to reach the destination, at which point I'd have minimal luggage and no personal transport. Way easier to just throw everyone & everything into the family SUV and drive, taking a similar travel time with what I want and have a vehicle when we arrive.
Which is one reason why the Northeast Corridor works even though it's only sorta high-speed rail. There are a few cities off the coast like Pittsburgh that miss out but you handle a lot of population with a single line.
The only caveat is that, because it's not really high-speed, it works better as north and south segments than as one single line. But because it's NYC in the middle, even that works pretty well.
I was going to write more or less the same thing. The headline is very misleading. Sure, I'd be interested in viable, reasonably cost effective high speed rail that connected cities I travel between. (Which doesn't really describe any of the routes on that map.)
I like trains. I rarely travel between Boston and Manhattan any other way. But there just aren't a lot of routes in the US between high traffic city pairs where travel time at realistic high speed rail speeds with appropriate intermediate stops are going to get you to the 4 hour or so range that you have to hit to be viable. Few business travelers are going to take an 8 hour+ train trip when there's a 2 hour flight option.
1. A high speed line down the California coast is totally impractical. Mountains, granite and huge grade changes make for an expensive proposition.
2. The broken links in the midwest between the network in Texas/Oklahoma with that stemming from Chicago is silly. Their are mothballed Rights-of-Way there that are perfect alignments for HSR.
Outside that, I'm still very much interested in a way to make HSR work in a number of areas for the US.
I'm always confused by the high-speed rail numbers. Exactly how many trains would it take to get 2/3 of the US population using rail?
Take the average international-sized airport runway. It can land a 747 every couple minutes. That's hundreds of people every minute. A high-speed rail line cannot take even a fraction of that number. The trains cannot run at speed without significant time/distance between them. That's the limit of one-dimension travel (rail) v the three dimensional world of aircraft. It would take dozens of parallel rail lines to replace even a medium sized airport. While we all might want to use rail for some journeys, I don't see it ever competing with air travel in the US market.
A Shinkansen line (arbitrarily chosen because it was the first thing that popped up in my search) can do 13 trains per hour with 1,323 passengers per train, which is equivalent to one 747 every 1.4 minutes.
That would replace one runway, but it still doesn't compare to the number of planes that the sky can handle. Sky which is cheap/free in comparison to building rails. There is definitely a point where trains are more efficient, particularly between a small number of large cities, but moving a large proportion of US air traffic onto trains, imho, is a different problem given the number of routes (1000s) and airports (100s).
I'd have to see the math, but there is also a question as to carbon emissions per-passenger/distance. I believe that on long flights (more time at high altitude) widebody aircraft might be more fuel efficient than high-speed trains stuck on tracks.
How many airports are landing anything like a 747 every 1.4 minutes? Especially given that the Shinkansen runs in both directions, so your airport is going to have to handle exclusively 747s, with high loadings and a headway of around 40 seconds. That's slightly more planes and massively more passengers than London Heathrow.
In terms of carbon emissions you'd need the flights to be long, and the trains to be pretty inefficient and empty (think current Amtrak trains), and even then there is evidence that the high altitude appears to make the emissions significantly more harmful than the equivalent ground-level emissions
It's hard to compare price because it is very rare for two means to compete directly. It's often apples and oranges. A train that moved as fast as plane isn't going to be very fuel efficient. They can be electric (insert source debate) but planes can also run on biofuel (another debate). And when comparing plane-train, a plane burns much of its fuel taking off and climbing to altitude. Once there (10,000m) it is remarkably fuel efficient in terms of passenger/mile at a given speed. And there are times when rail simply won't ever be an option (over large water). The head of RyanAir gave a great presentation a couple years ago about highspeed rail. His point was that, while great if you live in london and vacation in Paris, most people don't live downtown, that planes can land in places much closer to actual destinations --> reducing total-journey emissions.
I'd love a high-speed rail from Vancouver BC to Calgary Alberta, or Prince George (both places I go every year). But building such a structure is a monumental task (10s of billions) and a fast train would take a vast amount of energy covering that distance. Imho trains just cannot compete in such markets.
I take the train everyday. For me, travelling by train for < 4h trips to a city sounds like a good deal.
It is generaly a smoother experience than taking a low-cost flight. But, I realize it really depends on how 'car-first' and large your country is. Definately not an universal solution.
It all depends on the capacity of the train and how frequently it stops. Starting and stopping are the real killers since you need extra spacing (or very long "onramps") to accelerate and decelerate a train.
However, one concept is a train that never needs to start and stop. Passengers move onto a separate car that separates from the main train and can decelerate into the station, and then it reaccelerates and attaches to the next train. Conceptually, this allows you to run much larger trains since you don't need to decelerate it every 10 minutes for a stop.
This is the original concept. Let's just say I have some doubts about the feasibility of engineering that design in real life, but the concept of detaching cars seems sound to me. Conceptually I do like the idea of the detachable cars being a different type of unit with a higher top speed and better acceleration/deceleration units to assist in the deceleration and overtaking steps.
A simpler implementation would be to have self-propelled carriages that combine motors and passenger space, and have the car accelerate and decelerate on a siding. The main train would have to run at a slower speed than the detached car could achieve in order for it to "catch up" but could then accelerate back to top speed once reattached. This would lead to an "oscillating" pattern of distance between multiple trains on the line.
Also, at the end of the day a runway is still a "one-dimensional" unit of capacity in the same way that a rail line is. You can have multiple multiple runways or rail lines (which I guess is "two-dimensional" in your definition here) but you certainly can't have multiple decks of runways or land multiple airplanes on top of each other. It's actually perfectly feasible to have rail lines running at multiple depths, many subway stations do it.
The runway is one-dimensional, but aircraft still move in 3d. That means planes can be closer (in time) behind each other. Trains must leave room enough to stop. Planes can escape by diverting higher/lower/left/right. So planes stacked up on approach to a runway can safely be far closer together than trains on approach to a station.
Non-stopping trains are interesting, but such a solution would require the multiple parallel lines I mentioned above. And even the non-stopping trains would need some amount of space between them for emergency stopping and speed changes.
Given that it's incredibly important that the planes don't under any circumstances stop they have their own limiting factors. high speed trains using short or ideally variable block signalling and running on segregated high speed lines can achieve spacing which is pretty comparable to airplanes coming in to land.
En route airways are 3d, but approaches are 2d and landings are 1d. Large US airports are already at capacity, and above capacity in poor visibility conditions (like fog at SFO.)
There was a previous article[0]/discussion[1] on HN that contained a similar map of proposed high speed rail lines. This previous map made less sense because it encouraged building out new HSR lines across the vast expanses on the American midwest.
I like this new map better though - HSR makes the most sense for medium-distant transit. The Mid-Atlantic/New England area is a perfect example of a region where a lot of mid-distance travel happens. The current rail lines are okay but not fantastic and improved lines would be a positive for travelers.
I currently use rail once, maybe twice a year. Being faster could possibly make impact on that. It's a 4 hour train ride to Chicago but it's a 2 hour drive to Detroit or Cincinnati.
In theory if the train was twice as fast, becoming the same 2 hour ride, I'd be more likely to visit Chicago more for one-day or even a single evening event.
This would seem pretty clear when California voters (notorious for not voting in taxes or bonds) approved the high speed rail project. What was even more interesting were the forces that came out against it and how they have acted.
I voted for that bond measure, and now I regret it. I'm a little fuzzy on the details at this point, but my recollection is that it was originally planned to include major Caltrain improvements, which they have now given up on.
The intended improvements have changed, but they're still there. Hopefully we'll end up with electrification and level-loading, which should increase Caltrain people/hour to be the same as a BART line. 38% of tech workers in Palo Alto take Caltrain, just imagine what it could be if Caltrain wasn't running over 100% during rush hour.
California voters approved that project because they expected it to be a bit of priming that opened up the federal dollar spigot. If that doesn't actually happen the project will almost certainly be scrapped.
Well, they are currently breaking ground on high speed rail in California. We may get this question answered in actual fact in the not too distant future instead of in some hypothetical study.
Anyone have any ideas for how to help make it successful? I would love to have better transit options because I have no plans to drive a car ever again.
It really kind of fascinates me why people are so obsessed with rail and high speed rail. What are the emotional reasons for it, because there are no rational and reasonable arguments for it that can't be refuted. It makes absolutely no sense and strikes me as another one of those examples of obsessive thoughts and ideal people have these days. It's like all the shitty education we subjected people of roughly <35 years old to are starting to bear shitty rotten and mutated fruits.
High-speed rail is the best way to travel intermediate distances, say 200-1000 miles. In this realm, it's faster than air travel overall (because you have much less security nonsense and getting to the train station is much faster than getting to the airport) and it's far more comfortable.
Well, I can assure you that if train ridership increases, the risk will increase as a function of the attack vector and the threat by muslims. As that risk profile increases, so will the "security nonsense" and difficulty getting there increase.
Also, the degree of expedience at which airports function leaves a lot of room for improvement. There is really little reason why it could not get far more efficient. You seem to also miss the fact that even if you establish a route through 1,000 miles of other people's land and have dispossessed them through eminent domain, and you have blasted your way through ecosystems, you are then stuck with specific routes that can only adapt by scaling throughput of that specific route.
Think of it this way, with the pestilence of douchebags overrunning Austin there is no way that rail could have accommodated that growth, let alone even triggered it. What, are you going to build high speed rail infrastructure across multiple states to California to accommodate the flow of douchebags to SXSW and ACL? You'd be lucky to be done before Austin has suffocated itself and the bubble bursts and the next fad has drawn the attention of the pretentious class.
I won't disagree that train travel is more comfortable, but hell, you really need to be because the trip, at best, is going to take you three times as long. Because what you are also missing is that we are talking about high speed rail here, we are not talking about fast rail like Acela, which is quite convenient in the NE corridor, but also only because of the population density. But even that train stops on a regular basis, which is also a function of what makes is even remotely not a horrific idea even though it still loses money. The problem with air travel these days is that the Airline industry has essentially captured regulators and legislators and are raping the public with high prices they are colluding on and ever decreasing service and features, also essentially due to collusion and a lack of real competition.
Don't get me wrong, I realize that train travel has some benefits and is probably more energy efficient and less polluting, but reality is that it is in no way cost effective let alone adaptable and flexible.
The thing that kind of irks me the most about he wide eyed, pie in the sky, rail supporters is that they have absolutely no idea how much it actually costs to provide the kind of level of rail and public transportation infrastructure that you see in Europe. The costs are astronomical both in long term investments and in M&O. There are inklings of how much it really costs, but reality is that no one really have an accurate understanding of its cost because European governments keep that information under lock and key, lest the rabble find out how much their money is squandered.
Oh, there have been train fans for a very long time. And IMO rail is a comfortable way to travel for certain distances--especially given what a pain airports can be these days. But HSR is really expensive to build and distances and geography in the US make it hard to justify.
It may be hard to justify a national high speed rail network, but the coasts easily have enough population density to make it work on a regional basis.
The big problem with rail in the US, at this point, is you'd have to build out an enormous number of track miles to make the system actually work for people who wanted to use it, and that's going to cost a lot of money and displace a lot of people.
Dozens of people made the case to keep the line. Finally the street car company's lawyer got up and made the business case for discontinuing the line. He concluded by asking the crowd how many of you used our company's street car to get to this meeting? Not a single hand went up.
It's easy to tell a pollster you're for high speed rail but how many will actually buy a ticket? Perhaps they should ask for them to prepay for a ticket?