> When making changes to rail infrastructure or services, state and local railroad agencies often must negotiate with the freight railroad companies that own most of America’s track network. These companies [are] reluctant to allow more frequent passenger service that could reduce the amount of time their freight trains have access to track.

This article completely fails to mention the actual cause of our modern situation. Before focusing on increasing geographical coverage we would first need to focus on not decreasing geographic coverage. Check out the Abandoned & Out-of-Service Rail map of North America and you can see the result of massive corporate consolidation where newly-combined railroads abandon parts of each constituent company's former network to end up with the most track they can run for the least money. There is zero redundancy left: https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=10akDabya8L6nWIJi-4...

Most of the time, the trains were all but empty.

I think eventually Boston-NYC type routes will be handled by quad-copter type drones that land right in the city center. That type of passenger rail will be obsolete

It is a 3hr drive Sydney to Canberra and 4hr on train. Mainly because the train track was originally for freight so has more curves than needed for passenger.

They said rather than aim for a super fast train just improve the tracks we have and get the time down to 3hr to compete with the car.

This is a good point because then you get more revenues and usage (the trains are full right now but infrequent - maybe they can run them every 15 minutes)

Then you can go make the case for an even faster train for 2050.

The Japanese Shinkansen is something else. Doing my first decent trip on one this week and can't wait!

I'm very sorry, but such timelines are extremely disheartening and sound like a joke. The problem is, factually, other countries can build out HSRs within 5-10 year horizons, from planning to finishing a route. If it takes 2+ generations to even get a single line... I'm not sure what I can say.

I understand bureaucracy and problem solving processes work differently in our countries, but incredibly sad to see how a person can't see a significant progress within their own lifetimes. I'm not sure when I became such a defeatist, but it is what it is.

That's a self-fulfilling prophecy. First-class passenger trains are much more comfortable, roomier, and less expensive, but as long as they're so wildly slower, they have a hard time competing with air travel.

The cheapest first class train fare is $1,621 for the round trip, vs $385 for first class airfare.

How many people do you think care about the per-hour cost of travel. I feel confident saying that the vast majority of the traveling public wants to spend as little time and money as possible to get to their destinations.

The main time saver is that the train stations are much more central. Say you you need to leave your office in Beijing's financial district and meet a client at their office in Shanghai's financial district. The station in Bejing will be 6km from your office vs the airport (30km), and you'll get off the train 9km from your client (instead of 45km at the airport).

Yeah, but that only lasts until someone figures out a clever way to use a train as a weapon, in which case you get to add the same security time to the front of the trip -- or even longer, since we've actually managed to get the airport security time down a bit over the past two decades. It would seem optimistic to try to scale usage of rail without accounting for the (time, safety, etc) costs that come with increased usage of rail...

Meanwhile, the only major population centers between NY and Chicago are Pittsburg and Columbus - both of whom combined have a fraction of the population that Jiagnsu or Shandong have.

Furthermore, land acquisition is different in a country like the US versus China. Mass expropriation or eminent domain of land is politically untenable in the US, but something that is easier to implement in China as a significant amount of land remains under local municipal ownership instead of private ownership.

Anyway, if you only support building infrastructure in regions of the U.S. that are as densely populated as eastern China, you’d basically never build anything.

Correct.

Which

1. Already exists

2. Leads to the same problem as before - the population size just does not justify those investments, nor is there any business demand when a flight will always remain faster.

> Anyway, if you only support building infrastructure in regions of the U.S. that are as densely populated as eastern China, you’d basically never build anything

I support building infrastructure that solves an actual problem - and public transit connectivity between NY and Chicago isn't one of those.

It will remain slower than flight transit (so most business and plenty of personal travel will remain flight based) and car ownership remains high in the US, so for personal travel, the independence of driving would still outcompete rail.

Those billions of dollars on such a hypothetical are better spent on plenty of other alternative programs - for example the local transit expansion grants which the Biden admin bundled as part of the IIJA, which helped expand bus and local rail transit instead.

Even China has stopped financing these kinds of mega-projects becuase of tightening financial due dilligence, and tries to tie investments with an actual business case [0]. Heck, now prices are roughly the same between a domestic flight and HSR on the major lines in China.

[0] - https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/13/business/china-bullet-tra...

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The only network that could even justify a high speed rail is the DC-Philadelphia-NYC-Boston corridor (so an extended Acela Line), but are you also fine with the federal government expropriating land to speed up development OR spending decades democratically building consensus.

And even then DCA to JFK or Logan will remain time competitive for business travel

I mean, this is the catch-22 that prevents a lot of public transit projects from being built. Car ownership is high largely because in most places there is no viable public transit. Then people oppose building public transit because car ownership is high!

Maybe, but around a third of all tourism spend in the US is business travel related [0]. You cannot justify spending an overnight train ride from NYC to Chicago when you can reach there within 2 hours by flight.

The US is MASSIVE - much larger than most countries, and population centers are extremely spread out once you leave the Northeast. Outside the NE, the math (time wise or financially) doesn't play out well for rail based public transit.

You see the same dynamics in China as well - the overwhelming majority of medium-long distance public transit is along the extremely dense coast.

Expecting a French style TGV is unrealistic as long as San Francisco to Los Angeles is the same distance as Paris to Berlin - except with almost no major population centers in between, and plenty of massive mountain ranges. Same for the rest of the US outside of the NE. Similar extent with NY to Chicago as well (roughly the same distance as Berlin to St Petersburg)

[0] - https://www.statista.com/topics/1832/business-travel/#topicO...

Trains still have all their usual benefits including better passenger comfort and higher energy efficiency, and there is the option to build intermediate stations if the demand increases in the future.

I would also question the claim that overnight trains cannot be justified for business travel. If the cost is comparable to a hotel room - which is a big 'if', granted - this allows employees to be better rested and therefore work more effectively during the day.

You could justify a San Benito County expansion as part of a Caltrain electrification and expansion project for a fraction of the cost and headaches.

And do the same for San Joaquin County to the Bay+Sacramento, San Bernardino County to LA, and Imperial Valley to San Diego.

In fact, this is what the CA government has been doing after treating the HSR as de facto moribund.

There are also plenty of population centers between SF and LA which is why trains are going to stop in Fresno and Bakersfield (combined pop: 2.2 million). Also Palmdale. If Palmdale is nowhere then Brightline West is also a train to nowhere.

Alephnerd is making the same mistake that many nerds have made. They are arguing about the existing passenger, while the point of the project is to serve the next ten million Californians.

This isn't flat land. There are expansive mountain ranges that make it difficult to build and any flat land that is buildable is ALSO prime agricultural land that is worth millions.

Just to recoup the cost you end up with ticket prices comparable to a flight.

> I would also question the claim that overnight trains cannot be justified for business travel. If the cost is comparable to a hotel room - which is a big 'if', granted - this allows employees to be better rested and therefore work more effectively during the day.

Yeah no. I don't want employees to come in unshowered, and they still need a place to keep their luggage. Furthermore, plenty of people like maintaining their daily routine or spending time with their SOs. Flying a couple hours, staying at a hotel overnight, getting work done, and immediately bugging out back home is the norm.

Japan's Shinkansen started service in 1964, and the country is known for its mountains and earthquakes. Hell, forget Japan, California's mountain ranges somehow didn't stop America from building I-5, I-10, I-80, and what not, back in the 80s.

"Prime agricultural land" is non sequitur - those lands are sold by acres.

Flat land is convenient of course, but I don't think mountains are a make-or-break factor. It looks like the Interstate 5 already takes a viable route through the Tejon Pass, and as the land will already be publicly-owned it is a candidate for cut-and-cover or an elevated railway. A 5-mile tunnel to bypass Gorman would eliminate the tightest curve along the route.

Alternatively, for a detour of an hour or so the railway can be routed eastward through Los Angeles and through the Cajon Pass instead, thence following the path of Route 58.

But all of this doesn't negate my original point - that regardless of the feasibility of a railway, a lack of intermediate stops is not necessarily a disadvantage.

> Yeah no. I don't want employees to come in unshowered, and they still need a place to keep their luggage. Furthermore, plenty of people like maintaining their daily routine or spending time with their SOs. Flying a couple hours, staying at a hotel overnight, getting work done, and immediately bugging out back home is the norm.

The on-board facilities are among the easiest challenges to address. There are plenty of examples of showers on long-distance trains, and it's not much cost to build a few at the terminus station. Luggage can be sent ahead and lockers can be provided at stations.

Spending time with family? Those 'couple of hours flying' can add up: that's time that could have been spent with family, too!

They do Beijing to Shanghai in 5 hours so you have to make New York to Chicago in 4 or it doesn't count.

The numbers are funny. Flying from New York to Chicago takes less than 2 hours but all things considered you lose 8 hours https://www.trippy.com/fly/New-York-City-to-Chicago

You might as well drive it in 12.

Trains replace road trips, not air travel. You can travel from New York to Miami for $175 on Amtrak. That's a lot cheaper and much more comfortable than driving 1300 miles.

Saying you can do this faster or possibly cheaper on a budget airline is missing the point, because traveling on a budget airline is not enjoyable. There's no scenery. You're packed in like sardines. Best case scenario, every hour you spend in the plane is miserable. Every hour you spend waiting in airport security lines is miserable. Every hour spent waiting on the runway for delays is miserable. Waiting for your baggage only to find it is lost again is miserable. You can't get up to stretch your legs, sit down, the seat belt light is on.

On the Amtrak there are dining cars, cafe cars, observation cars. There's five toilets on each car, you never have to wait. There's free wifi. There are no middle seats to be miserable in. You can bring your own beer and drink it on the train. You can't do any of that in car or on an airline. Riding the train is more fun than flying, and a lot less hazardous than driving. If it takes a little longer than flying, that just means more time for fun.

It might be decent for a solo traveler, but for the stereotypical family road trip to Florida, the car still wins out.

You can go to the bathroom on the train. You can sleep on the train. You can eat on the train. Which means the 28 hours is the total time and the $175 is total price. Avg gas price is 3.37/gal. (https://ycharts.com/indicators/us_gas_price) Avg new car milage is 25 mpg, 52*3.37 is ... $175. Same as the train fare, but that's just the gas.

Taking the car is just dangerous and miserable IMO. Train wins.

Like I said the train would probably work better for a solo traveller, but then why not fly? It's crazy to spend 28+ hours on a train when a plane ticket is around the same cost and 2 hours.

That's like saying it's crazy not to fill your salad bowl entirely with cheese :)

https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/salad

Besides, we both know it's 2 hours in line just for the TSA check sometimes. I'm very familiar with flying. I've probably logged enough air milage to circle the globe 10 times or more. I despise it. It's nothing like traveling by train. I can board a train in under 5 minutes. I don't even have to have a ticket, I can just decide to go and pay the conductor once I'm on board. Try that on a plane.

USA. Biggest economy on earth. Most powerful nation. Third largest nation by population. Could maybe build one bullet train, like the 20 other nations that already have them in service, and the 13 other nations that have them in development.

Or just settle for mediocrity. Whatever.

The US suffers from the notion of exceptionalism spawned from its position of massive advantage after WWII, as well as a deep seated aversion to mass transit that was borne out of the backlash against desegregation.

I'm probably missing many smaller factors, but I'd be interested to know if someone thinks that I've incorrectly identified those two as major factors.

Besides the obvious investments making tickets more expensive a different example would be if you accelerate faster you need more rails maintenance.

You can also leave carts behind and pick them up at stops so that people who need it have all the time to get in and out. If you do that (like with many options) it gets marvelously complicated really fast.

Even if you try fit an intercity (that doesn't stop everywhere) it will have to be at the right place at the right time to pass the other train(s)

You can also not make it fast and make the trip more enjoyable. You can just stop for 30 min or an hour at each station and have stores and museums at the station bring in more revenue than tickets.

If I had to guess the most successful trick for the US would be to have people bring their car on the train.

From there, they’re laying new rail to LV.

The clever part is that they’re laying the rail down the middle of I-15, which is a divided interstate. This lets them built rail to their specifications, a dedicated rail, and also bypass no doubt a huge amount of approvals and things such as environmental studies.

Most of that simply doesn’t apply to the middle of the I-15.

So it’s a bit of a perfect storm that’s enabling this project.

The big question is whether they can get schedule priority getting out of the Inland Empire and over the pass to Barstow. Most passenger traffic is second class on the freight lines (which is where much of the delays and low quality of modern train travel stems from).

But, yea, eager to see this. Supposed to be ready for the ‘28 LA Olympics.

My only concern is pricing. It's gonna have to be about 50$ each way to be worth it in my opinion. You can get a flight to a fro for about 150$ and that's out an airport like burbank which is very low security and easy to navigate.

Imagine believing that anyone will be willing to attend the 28 games in America.

Never had the chance to use it, but one of the more exciting US rail developments I’ve seen recently.

I have absolutely zero faith in california high speed rail doing anything within my lifetime while China can build hundreds of miles in a few years.