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Posted on 4/15/24 at 11:47 am to bad93ex
By the time this is built here driverless cars will make it obsolete.
Posted on 4/15/24 at 11:50 am to UGATiger26
quote:
Sure, we could have high-speed rail connecting Birmingham and Atlanta, but once you arrived in either city, you're still going to need your own car. Things are too spread out, and public transportation is woefully inadequate.
The 1000lb gorilla in the room.
Rail works very well in yurop because many cities were not designed with cars in mind and you don’t *need* a car.
You pretty much have to have a car in most U.S. cities because they were designed to defer convenience to drivers rather than pedestrians.
Posted on 4/15/24 at 11:51 am to UGATiger26
quote:
Sure, we could have high-speed rail connecting Birmingham and Atlanta, but once you arrived in either city, you're still going to need your own car. Things are too spread out, and public transportation is woefully inadequate.
Uber helps out a lot with this
Posted on 4/15/24 at 11:51 am to Bestbank Tiger
In Asia it’s 4 hours for major hubs but that’s with 1-3 quick stops. I think it’s fine and adds to economy diversification from just coasts to inner America
Posted on 4/15/24 at 11:52 am to bad93ex
Can't work on our current infrastructure. Anything can work on new infrastructure that is only imagined and not yet built.
Posted on 4/15/24 at 11:52 am to bad93ex
quote:
that we can be exactly like Europe
Europe has actually been trending the other way. There are now a bunch of independent and low cost airlines connecting just about every European city.
In the past there were only the big national airlines (Air France, KLM, Lufthansa, etc.) and flights were relatively sparse apart from major cities and they were very expensive. Now there are airlines like EasyJet, RyanAir, Wizz Air, Norwegian, Eurowings, etc. that offer prices that are cheaper than the high speed trains and get you there quicker. Sure people will still take a high speed train from Brussels to Paris or Munich to Frankfurt, but they are hopping on planes a lot more now and expanding their travel and business horizons.
Posted on 4/15/24 at 11:54 am to ELVIS U
quote:
Anything can work on new infrastructure that is only imagined and not yet built.
The people pushing these types of monumental new infrastructure projects are the same people who believe that the interstate system is racist because it was built through poor areas of urban centers in the 60's/70's.
I wonder if they know where the right of ways for this type of thing would run.
Posted on 4/15/24 at 11:57 am to fareplay
Additionally, back to “last mile”, lots of these European cities are extremely walkable, not just in infrastructure but climate-wise. Imagine taking a main line train to a local metro train to get within 6-4 blocks of your destination in San Antonio in mid July carrying your bag or brief case or whatever. You’d be soaked by the time you made the first block.
Posted on 4/15/24 at 11:58 am to fareplay
quote:
Asia it’s 4 hours for major hubs but that’s with 1-3 quick stops. I think it’s fine and adds to economy diversification from just coasts to inner America
Maybe.
But what good is 2 hours for Chicago to NYC if you live in Cincy or Indianapolis and have to drive to Chicago to board the train?
Posted on 4/15/24 at 11:58 am to poochie
I mean most airports have direct access to shuttles buses taxis.
No this rail won’t take you in front of your house, but it should take you to the middle of city, airport, conference center, sports stadium, etc which is good enough for majority of people
No this rail won’t take you in front of your house, but it should take you to the middle of city, airport, conference center, sports stadium, etc which is good enough for majority of people
Posted on 4/15/24 at 11:59 am to Dire Wolf
quote:
Uber helps out a lot with this
Kind of, but not really.
Yes, Uber solves the problem if you only need a couple of rides, say from the train station to a friend's house and back.
But if you need to have flexibility to visit various locations while you are in your destination city, Uber would get cost-prohibitive. A dozen rides adds up real quick.
Posted on 4/15/24 at 12:00 pm to fareplay
quote:
I mean most airports have direct access to shuttles buses taxis. No this rail won’t take you in front of your house, but it should take you to the middle of city, airport, conference center, sports stadium, etc which is good enough for majority of people
Ok, so you’re adding more cost and removing more convenience.
At some point public transport becomes less convenient per dollar spent.
Posted on 4/15/24 at 12:02 pm to fareplay
quote:
I mean most airports have direct access to shuttles buses taxis
Specifically to this comment: you know what airplanes don’t need? Rails. Or any type of route infrastructure. You can have numerous planes going from Chicago to NYC at once, only minutes apart. Not with rail.
Posted on 4/15/24 at 12:03 pm to bad93ex
This question has been answered. Decisively.
Posted on 4/15/24 at 12:05 pm to greenbean
quote:
Most of the US is too far spread out though.
Exactly. The train infrastructure to connect the US would be prohibitively expensive to both build and maintain, vs "air" which costs zero to build and zero to maintain. The smart answer, as has been noted already, is offer/optimize it in densely populated areas...but that's already happening.
Also in the OP scenario you would skip the airport, but you'd still have to experience a train station with the same level of security/baggage handling, etc. So that's basically a wash.
This post was edited on 4/15/24 at 12:07 pm
Posted on 4/15/24 at 12:05 pm to bad93ex
Not a chance if we're talking from coast-to-coast. The high speed rail that is happening here in Fresno is a freaking mess in every way conceivable. We aren't even having to bother with trying to get it through the Sierra Nevadas or the Coastal Range that surround us to the east and west. The costs have ballooned out of control. Farmland, businesses, private property... all taken via eminent domain. It's bad. Again, the area they're building on now is basically flat and without natural barriers and it's still a trainwreck.
The best you can hope for is in specific corridors and even that will be a hard sell for a country with the car culture that we have. It is not economical for my family to go to anywhere in the state and end up having to get an uber to go to say a Dodgers game. The time savings will be minimal and I'll have to catch an uber when I get to Los Angeles. I can get to LA and back for about $75 right now and do so in my own time and how I want to go about doing it.
The best you can hope for is in specific corridors and even that will be a hard sell for a country with the car culture that we have. It is not economical for my family to go to anywhere in the state and end up having to get an uber to go to say a Dodgers game. The time savings will be minimal and I'll have to catch an uber when I get to Los Angeles. I can get to LA and back for about $75 right now and do so in my own time and how I want to go about doing it.
Posted on 4/15/24 at 12:06 pm to bad93ex
I'm just going to post this and let it explain itself
Posted on 4/15/24 at 12:06 pm to bad93ex
we can't keep regular trains maintained correctly and keep them on the tracks, but lets put in trains on high speed tracks - yeah what could fricking go wrong there
Posted on 4/15/24 at 12:08 pm to bad93ex
Ha. My son loves trains. We recently watched a show about the Shinkansen (Japanese Bullet Train). The amount of work the Japanese do to make sure that the train runs on time and is safe to ride is incredible. I seriously doubt the current American low wage worker could or would pull it off.
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