
As the U.S. fantasizes, the world builds high speed rail - jseliger
http://www.thetransportpolitic.com/2017/07/01/a-generational-failure-as-the-u-s-fantasizes-the-rest-of-the-world-builds-a-new-transport-system/
======
serhei
For those who think it's because of geography / hyperloop is better technology
anyways / any other red herring besides Brezhnevian political stagnation:

It's not completely implausible that, 30 years from now, most of Europe and
Asia are connected by hyperloops while the US has built nothing and Internet
commentators are arguing that hyperloop is old news compared to yet-unproven
teleportation technology, and anyways the population density of the US doesn't
support hyperloops.

~~~
zionic
Installing "high speed" rail that's less than 200mph in the US today is like
installing 6MB copper DSL and calling it a win.

Notice developing economies are going wireless/fiber and skipping the "legacy"
generation, the US should be doing the same with MagLev/hyperloop.

The issue is we spend our money policing the world/blowing up countries then
paying to rebuild them. If we weren't so hell-bent on global hegemony we could
spend more on infrastructure at home.

~~~
adventured
It'd be more accurate to leave off the "we" that you insist on using to
artificially bolster your premise.

George W. Bush was elected on a platform of no more nation building (and
secured his second term in an atmosphere of fear and war), as was Donald
Trump. It's very clear that the majority of Americans do not want more war &
nation building (the only ones that do, are a contingent of conservatives like
McCain and even fewer similar hawks on the other side).

The globalists + military industrial complex go ahead and do what they want
anyway, against the wishes of the American public. They've been doing so for a
long, long time now. Vietnam was not a very popular war, they did it anyway.
The notion of no longer blowing up the Middle East and treating Russia as a
villain, was impossible for them to stomach re Trump, so the CIA & fellow
globalists (aka the deep state, media, etc) immediately went on _hyper_ attack
(oh the consequences of going against the machine).

~~~
pikzen
> as was Donald Trump

>The notion of no longer blowing up the Middle East and treating Russia as a
villain, was impossible for them to stomach re Trump,

Ah, yes, which is why he's threatening North Korea, attacking airfields in
Syria, selling weapons to Saudi Arabia (which is currently in a war with
Yemen), bombing in Afghanistan, in his own words giving the military "total
authorization", authorized a raid in Yemen, and the list goes on.

You were _sold_ no more nation building, by a man who has interests in having
his fingers everywhere in the globe. That you bought it hook, line and sinker
is yet another problem.

In the same way, the Vietnam war was reasonably popular at first. It was
barely around 67 and after countless deaths that the opinion was
overwhelmingly negative, forcing the US to go back tail between its legs.

Maybe Americans no longer want war. Every single leader they are electing
certainly doesn't share that opinion though. So, either they actually quite
enjoy playing world police, or they're quite frankly so manipulable it becomes
scary. But go on ahead and blame "the globalists" and "the deep state" (which,
intended or not, is very much an InfoWars term, not exactly a reputable
source), I am certain that'll do a lot of good.

~~~
robin_reala
_So, either they actually quite enjoy playing world police, or they 're quite
frankly so manipulable it becomes scary._

‘Both’ is also an option.

------
twblalock
The problems affecting high-speed rail in the US are the same problems that
prevent low-speed rail, streetcars, subways, and buses from being more common
-- people don't see themselves using such things and so they don't want to pay
for them.

In the Bay Area, the Caltrain commuter train runs from San Jose to San
Francisco, through the downtown areas of most major cities in between. It is
currently so popular that it is significantly over capacity every day. Yet it
is still a constant political battle to get funding to improve the system,
even though the Bay Area is one of the most educated and politically liberal
parts of the country, where support for public transit is higher than many
other places.

Sometimes I think we would have much more transit funding overall if we set
aside part of the transit budget to send Americans to other countries on
vacation, so they will return knowing how good public transit can actually be.

~~~
tptacek
I do not think this is true. I think people have an easier time seeing
themselves in an Acela car than they do in a Jetblue seat --- which is part of
why the Acela is so popular. People don't _drive_ from DC to NYC so they can
signal their independence. Pretty much, they don't _drive_ from DC to NYC at
all.

Where HSR is feasible and built out in the US, it gets used. The problem is,
HSR isn't feasible for the most economically important routes in the US.

You can get from London to Paris in 3 hours on a train, and from Paris to
Frankfurt in about 5. Almost as a rule, the most economically central European
cities are closer to each other by rail than the most important American
cities are --- excepting the Eastern Seaboard, _where we have rail_ \--- by
_air_.

~~~
meddlepal
Have you ridden Acela and done so frequently? It's not that great of an
experience of you haven't. Expensive and often delayed.

~~~
wyclif
Expensive, often delayed, people noisy and talking loudly in the so-called
"quiet car", slow to non-existent internet connectivity, etc.

~~~
r00fus
Do you rely on provided internet? Doesn't your phone LTE work well?

------
gokhan
I'm on a vacation in Italy and just used one this morning from Florence to
Bologna with Trenitalia. A lot of positive things: The ride was 35 minutes
long, doesn't include any security theater, you can arrive the station 10
minutes before the departure and hop in a couple of minutes, comfortable,
roomy, from city center to almost city center, and many more. And the train
continued to all the way to Turin, visiting many cities including Milan in 2-3
hours. Cost was 16ish euros, I guess (deducing from a total payment for four
people).

Doing the same though air travel would add at least a total of 2-3 hours for
the whole thing. Don't know about the cost comparison but the user
satisfaction is there.

~~~
aerovistae
Frankly the lack of security frightens me. It's only cool til someone stands
up on your car and pulls out an AR. Then suddenly it's "what were they
thinking."

Happened in France, fortunately with no casualties...

~~~
imgabe
> It's only cool til someone stands up on your car and pulls out an AR

It continues to be cool for the thousands of other trips that day and the
millions of other trips afterwards where that doesn't happen.

Better to build a society that doesn't create people who feel the need to mow
down a train car full of people than to treat everyone else like a criminal a
priori.

~~~
aerovistae
I agree 100%, but I don't think we're in that society yet.

------
tptacek
This topic comes up routinely on Hacker News, and it's no surprise why: there
are a lot of Europeans interacting with a lot of Americans here, and European
high speed rail is an enviable asset for the continent.

But last time we talked about this, it seemed to me that if you looked into
the details, it was clear why we don't have HSR in the US. Even assuming we
built a network that operated at Shanghai Maglev speeds, at the distances the
network would need to operate, air travel would remain significantly more
economical.

In a thread 3 years ago, I made a list of the top US cities by GDP, and then
broke out the crow-flies ground distances between them:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8713324](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8713324)

Of the 55 edges on this graph, only 6 were 700 miles apart or less. Several of
those are already served by the Acela.

There's a definite advantage to rail over air, in that rail can deposit you
right in the middle of the city you're heading to. But that advantage can't
make up for the fact that no train is going to compete with a plane for trips
between the largest US cities.

~~~
mattkrause
I'm not convinced that the numbers in your link are quite so conclusive.

First, with stops factored in, the Acela makes about 75 mph. This is
competitive with _driving_ , not flying. There's a lot of room for improvement
right there.

Second, I'm not sure that distance between the biggest cities matters. Is
there actually a ton of traffic between Philly and Los Angles, for example?
You could easily imagine several unconnected networks (SF-LA-SD, for example,
along with an upgraded Boston-DC route, or something between Austin, Houston,
and Dallas).

In a similar vein, you could imagine connecting one major city to a bunch of
somewhat smaller ones. For example, Chicago to Madison, Milwaukee, or even
Minneapolis. This wouldn't necessarily _replace_ air travel, but it would
integrate those cities more tightly and might replace a lot of driving.
Madison to Chicago even becomes a (somewhat) reasonable commute!

~~~
tptacek
At European rail speeds, a train from Chicago to Minneapolis --- which, as a
Chicagoan who likes Minneapolis, I wish existed! --- would take 6-7 hours. A
flight from Chicago to Minneapolis takes just an hour and a half, and there
are so many of them that catching one is no harder than catching a train.

On the list I provided, where do you see major opportunities for us to build
out rail? I know that there are some! I just don't think there are many, or
that it will ever make sense for us to have a densely connected HSR network
like Europe.

~~~
lopezyignacio
The distance between Chicago and Minneapolis is slightly higher than the
distance between Paris and Montpellier.

For those cities in France, the time travel from city center to city center is
about 3 hours and half by train, with 2 stops on the way. It beats both car
and air travel, since you can just to show up at the station 5 minutes before
the train departs, and don't need to go through security.

Also, the cheap tickets cost less than 50 euro, and you can get between 25%
and 50% discount if you are less than 25 years old.

~~~
falukorv
Realistically you'll never get tickets that cheap unless you plan weeks in
advance, though.

The French train system is expensive and too centralized. You'll find many
examples of how great French trains are but everyone only ever talks about
traveling to or from Paris. And sure, it's great and convenient for Parisians.

But when you want to connect two mid-size, non-Paris cities that are more than
~500 km apart, travel by train becomes a time-consuming and expensive affair.
For instance, taking the train from Nancy to Grenoble costs about 120€ if
you're lucky; it forces you to take a massive detour through Paris and change
train stations there. Changing stations in Paris is stressful and takes at
least half an hour - since there are no shuttles, you must take the subway
(and change subway lines too!)

All in all, what should have been a 3 hour journey becomes a costly 7-8 hour
ordeal, thanks to the extreme centralization of the French rail network. Many
people are getting fed up with this -- carpooling across long distances is
becoming popular because it can often be faster and much cheaper than rail!

~~~
_kyran
Just an annecdote, it is possible to regularly get tickets that cheap if using
igtv or ouigo. I was in Montpelier last month and found a ticket for 25€ to
Paris.

------
chroem-
Unpopular opinion, but I really don't see why we should want high speed rail
in the first place. It's slower than flying on a commuter airline, but the
tickets cost nearly as much, and it's also _enormously_ expensive to build.
Then there's also the issue of throughput and last mile logistics. You're
limited to putting people in a few train cars, as opposed to a continuous
stream of people on a freeway. Being a high speed train, stops are necessarily
few and far between, so once you arrive at the station you still have to
figure out how to travel tens of miles to where you really want to go.

My perception is that it's a huge money pit for something that's quite frankly
inferior to our current infrastructure. We would be much better off improving
our current insterstate system.

~~~
jacquesm
Rail is superior to highways on quite a few dimensions:

\- faster (200 Km/h and up)

\- much lower accident per passenger mile

\- in _theory_ it should be cheaper (it isn't for a variety of reasons, many
of those are political)

\- it allows you to work while you're in motion (much harder in a car or a
plane)

\- more land efficient

\- connects the _centers_ of cities rather than the outskirts which in many
cases removes that last mile problem because the majority of traffic is city-
to-city

For the United States the situation is better served anyway by comparing rail
and air travel, air travel scales better as the distance increases, is
(roughly) comparable in cost per ticket and tends to be faster on longer
distances.

~~~
vosper
I suspect that by the time we could build a high speed rail network in the US
(say 30-40 years, minimum) autonomous vehicles on the freeway will be the
superior option. There's no fundamental reason that road vehicles couldn't
exceed 200kph, just that humans are completely incapable of piloting safely at
anywhere near those speeds. Once the need for a forward-looking pilot is gone
you could design vehicles completely around the comfort of the occupants.

And, better than HSR, the same vehicle can go door-to-door.

~~~
jacquesm
> here's no fundamental reason that road vehicles couldn't exceed 200kph

Actually, there is: energy costs for road traffic go up as the square of the
velocity, for rail this is much better because there is only one (very
aerodynamic) front section for as many carriages as you want to put behind the
loc and steel-on-steel has much better rolling resistance than rubber-on-
asphalt or concrete.

~~~
vosper
That's a fair point, what's the energy cost of building thousands of miles of
new railways, rather than using existing freeways? (okay, I'm being a little
facetious)

With regard to aerodynamics, I am assuming that following distances for
advanced autonomous vehicles will be minimal. They could maybe drive bumper-
to-bumper as long as all cars in the ... er ... train were similarly capable.

~~~
ocschwar
Track costs far less (in money and energy) to build and maintain than freeway.

~~~
CamperBob2
Unlike roads, fixed rail is virtually guaranteed not to be where you are, or
to go where you want to go.

There is a reason the US isn't well-connected by rail, and it has nothing to
do with loony conspiracy theories about General Motors buying all the tracks
up.

~~~
ocschwar
> Unlike roads, fixed rail is virtually guaranteed not to be where you are, or
> to go where you want to go.

For no reason except the political. Go to any country in Europe, and you'll
find that even the shopping malls have railway sidings and not just truck
loading bays.

~~~
CamperBob2
To us, 200 years seems like a long time. To you, 200 kilometers seems like a
long distance.

~~~
ocschwar
Dude, I'm American.

~~~
CamperBob2
Then you should know why it's not practical to run rails to every grocery
store and dry cleaner in every town in the US.

I will never understand the obsession with fixed-rail transit on this site.
It's interesting to observe, but it's never been satisfactorily explained. Is
it just a matter of people never having been out of the Bay Area in their
lives?

In an age where personal mobility is becoming more important rather than less,
when costs associated with large-scale civic construction projects have
skyrocketed and completion times have come to be measured in decades, and when
networked fleets of self-driving cars are almost literally just around the
corner, rail transit in the general case is about the dumbest thing ever. But
I recognize that this is essentially a religious argument, and that you're
equally certain you're right. Not much we can do but vote accordingly, I
guess.

~~~
ocschwar
> Then you should know why it's not practical to run rails to every grocery
> store and dry cleaner in every town in the US.

Then I know that track costs less to install and maintain than roads. If it
isn't practical to run track, it isn't practical to run roads.

~~~
CamperBob2
_Then I know that track costs less to install and maintain than roads. If it
isn 't practical to run track, it isn't practical to run roads._

I don't see how that can be true in the general case. Around here, in the
Seattle area, a recent 34-mile light rail installation cost about $368
million. Four-lane roads cost about $500K per mile these days, from what I can
tell. (And yes, that seems unrealistically low by an order of magnitude -- I
think the sources I Googled up are referring only to initial costs, or costs
associated with building rural Interstates.)

Our next big rail project, ST3, will install 62 miles of rail over 20+ years
at a cost of over $50 _billion._

Rail serves a tiny contingent of the population at enormous expense,
effectively rooting them to the spot in the process. It has never really been
shown to be effective at removing cars from the roads, certainly not in
proportion to its price.

There has to be a better way. There may not be, right now, but there darned
sure will be by the time the megaprojects we're considering today are complete
and ready for service.

~~~
ocschwar
> Our next big rail project, ST3, will install 62 miles of rail over 20+ years
> at a cost of over $50 billion.

Good basis for comparison. Because you see, for a typical freeway, a billion
per mile is the cost.

And that's just installation.

Add in the cost to maintain the roads, and they lose to tracks hands down.
Tracks don't need to be resurfaced. And track beds don't need a resurfacing
just to get inspected.

(You're also missing the added cost for the overhead wiring if you're going to
compare against electrified rail.

~~~
CamperBob2
_Good basis for comparison. Because you see, for a typical freeway, a billion
per mile is the cost._

Where do you get that? Obviously we got more than 500 miles of freeway for the
$500B (inflation-adjusted) that the Eisenhower Interstate System cost us. We
got about 50,000 miles, which works out to $10M/mile.

So something seems to have made both highway _and_ rail construction cost
ludicrous amounts of money, if you're right about the $1B/mile figure. I don't
think you are, though -- that amount is what I've heard cited for the most
expensive mile of highway in the country, which supposedly is the stretch of
I-90 that crosses Mercer Island. I'd have to throw a [Citation Needed] flag on
the billion-dollar-per-mile figure, in the general case. If we're really
spending that much on roads these days, somebody needs to figure out where all
that money is going.

------
dghughes
I envy mainland Europe with its rail system. I wish my region of Canada would
build a rail system. What we have is old and mainly was for transporting ore,
steel, grain. Even just regular rail not even high speed any speed is
preferable in a snowstorm.

My region is small and would be perfect for a light rail system mainly because
it's got few people scattered over a wide area with no direct route.

Bombardier even makes rail cars for many countries so it's a home-grown
resource we could use.

I think south eastern Canada and north eastern US could have a great
interconnected rail system. I'm only 800 km (~500 miles) from Boston but I may
as well be on the dark side of the moon.

Like NY city before its subway system people were crowded in the city but when
rail was expanded people could live in the suburbs and work in the city. I
think a US and Canadian rail system would open up travel and trade on the
eastern coasts of each country. Day trips to cities you'd never even think of
visiting now or not even capable doing so now in a day.

~~~
cylinder
The Anglosphere is just becoming a big joke altogether.

------
mc32
Rail is not cheap. It's feasible when we have population density. It would
make sense along the DC-Boston megalopolis and perhaps SF-San Diego, maybe
some stretch of Texas. It makes little sense in the rest of the country.

That said, where it would make sense, like DC-Boston, we definitely should
build it out. Build up the cities as the countryside is absorbed (as seen in
Japan, and elsewhere in Asia) and let it become viable. Its deployment would
definitely affect how cities and other communities grow and also depopulate,
so we'd need to anticipate that and prepare for it.

Three things China has going for is vis a vis the US:

-Pop density

-Command economy (gov't can just move things through with little debate, displace 1MM people, if necessary.)

-Costs (in labor, materials, regulation, etc.)

~~~
Spooky23
That's already a busy rail corridor. But guess what? It's falling apart.

Millions of people pass through the NYC rail terminals every year, and the big
inter-city one is crippled by infrastructure failures and damaged tunnels that
connect to NJ. It seems that the NJ government spent Federal $$ provided to
fix it on something else.

We're living in an age of incompetence.

~~~
mc32
Acela is not really high-speed rail. They should build out bona-fide high-
speed rail ala Shinkansen. New track, new rolling stock, new propulsion
systems, and affordable fares. NYC-Boston should be half of what it is now and
they should eliminate all the "classes". It should be simply utilitarian
transport.

------
notadoc
I wonder if the USA will ever build and modernize its infrastructure? We're
still coasting on what was built 50, 60, 70+ years ago.

Then you travel to the rest of the developed world, and wow, what a difference
in infrastructure.

~~~
protomyth
The US picked cargo over people for rail. The US has an amazing logistics
system comprising of truck, rail, barge, and air. Some people are working on
adding drones.

Not having passenger rail was a choice. Automated cars and the potential of
Hyperloop might seriously change people's opinion of passenger rail.

~~~
cylinder
Keep dreaming and buying into whatever fantasy rich people keep selling.
Hyperloop isn't even a thing and neither are driverless cars. Even if we get
fully automated cars the roads will stay congested.

~~~
protomyth
I get the feeling driver-less cars are going to be a thing given all the
money. I do wish we could have some standards for "annotating" the roads with
useful beacons to help things along, but the money is probably going to talk.
If driver-less cars appear, I do expect roads to flow a bit better just
because of proper grouping and better coordinated exit / entrances.

Yes, the Hyperloop is pretty iffy, but at least it won't conflict with freight
rail.

------
armenarmen
Well, the fact that te government subsidized the automotive and oil industries
with the Federal highway act in '56 lead to our deprioritization of rail. Had
this not been the case, chances are we'd have European equivalent rail, and
the small local trolley systems that dotted americas small and medium sized
cities would never have been torn up.

~~~
revelation
No no, it's not billions spent on cars and suburbia, it's the size of the
country!

~~~
ivan_gammel
Haha. You should try driving from Moscow to Vladivostok.

~~~
madaxe_again
Most of that drive is actually ok - there are about 500km of unpaved road en
route, and only three or so river fordings.

Managed it in a 1988 Merc 190E in eight days, so if that can do it, anything
can.

------
closeparen
The US has a strong inter-city travel network in the airlines.

The TSA severely limits its effectiveness, so it could be tempting to build a
rail network just to bypass the TSA, but there's no reason to think the same
screening procedures won't apply to HSR after the first incident (or just
threat).

~~~
smudgymcscmudge
This reminds me of the popularity boost various nosql databases got because it
allowed devs to sidestep bureaucracy that had built up around schema changes.

~~~
bsder
That's the first useful justification I have ever seen for NoSQL.

How in the world did I miss such an obvious thing?

------
sdiq
Every time I hear or read something about the US I realize the country is in
many ways far behind Europe. When it comes to healthcare (in terms of
accessibility), education (in terms of cost), infrastructure, etc, America
seems to be doing much worse than these countries. Yet, ironically, America
still leads these countries (and the rest of the world) in most other spheres.

~~~
ensiferum
Keep in mind that in US all these services that us Europeans think are for the
benefit for the society such as health care of education are actually just for
the benefit of the private companies who rake in the money while the society
foots the bill of these bad policies. But that's what you get when you have a
goverment which is for the businesses instead of for the people.

------
jamespitts
We have a serious problem with retrogradism in this country.

A large number of people are suffering from changes outside of their control,
and they are disconnected from those at the forefront of social and
technological progress. Many of these people have lost trust in the system,
and even in progress itself (outside of progressions that are accessible and
affordable such as games or phones). As a result, there is little enthusiasm
for investing in major improvements to systems or building any major
infrastructure enabling progress.

"High speed rail? What is in it for me? I work part time and can't afford
these medications. I want the life I used to have back."

Perhaps a good place to start is understanding the experience of people who
are voting for an imagined retrograde society. This can be difficult for those
of us who have had the privilege of a better education, or better
opportunities in the cities, or even all of our needs met as we build what we
build. The privileged must try, and must succeed in understanding what is
happening here. This is because the votes of those within what is essentially
a ghetto lead to major consequences, including underfunding high speed rail.
The result isn't just ridiculously under-qualified and intellectually isolated
politicians that are easy to make fun of.

The underprivileged will keep voting in this way until their concerns are
answered (or not).

We at the technological forefront know more about what needs to be done in
terms of advancing progress, possibly even to the point of solving half of all
social problems. However, we must also pay heed to the immediate, harsh
reality of the people left behind. Our environment -- natural, political, or
infrastructural -- depends on this.

If the ethical demand to listen and react appropriately to the suffering of
others does not convince us to strongly act, watching the destructive results
of their votes should.

~~~
laretluval
I would not have much interest in greater understanding between me and someone
who calls my desires "retrograde".

~~~
jamespitts
That is assuming the term retrograde is a bad thing; often it is not. I might
have chosen a better word, and am curious if there is one.

This retrograde notion is based on a lot of evidence and personal experiences.
For example, in a conversation I had with someone a few years ago I asked what
is wrong with the way things are. That person told me he wants things to be
like the way they were in the 1950s, referring to the sense of community, job
opportunities, and social mores.

~~~
mnm1
Sounds to me like those people miss Jim Crow and the advantages of a society
built on the persecution and hate of others. Retrograde with all its negative
connotations doesn't even begin to be negative enough for the situation you're
describing. Yes, you could have chosen a better word but you're looking in the
wrong direction.

------
faragon
May be the US is doing a wiser thing. I live in Spain, where high speed train
was pushed in the era of the housing bubble, and in my opinion is not that big
deal, except for communicating the two bigger cities of Spain (Madrid and
Barcelona). Lower capacity routes are on deficit, and I'm very skeptical about
their long term viability.

------
thisrod
There is another question here. How the hell did the French build 300km of
high speed track, going through _central Paris_ , for only 10 billion dollars?
If Australia could do that, the cost benefit analysis on Melbourne, Sydney and
Brisbane would look very different.

Melbourne to Sydney is worth doing now, though it's a close thing. But the
benefits come as time savings for rich businessmen, and Australia told them
that if they really wanted it they could pay for it themselves.

~~~
wluu
They really need to build high speed rail across the east coast of Australia.
We've talked about it in this country for so long and yet nothing is
happening.

~~~
thisrod
The problem is that it will cost 100 billion dollars (!), and it really isn't
clear that it's worth that much. That's where the French seem to have some
magical advantage.

------
scythe
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brightline](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brightline)
appears to be for real in Florida and the Acela now carries a majority of
traffic on some parts of the Boston-NY corridor and service to Washington.
Texas has much cheaper gas and stronger car culture than anywhere in Europe or
Canada. It's really just California that's lagging behind expectations; the
other two projects could be better. And Florida / Texas / California /
Northeast wraps up all of the locations in the US that are viable for high-
speed intercity passenger rail. The only truly underserved corridor in North
America is Toronto - Detroit/Windsor - Chicago, but most people don't even
recognize it as a possibility because it crosses a border.

So instead of "what's wrong with the US" we should ask "what went wrong with
CA HSR?".

------
rmoriz
You can't even compare the population density of France with Germany, hence
why always apply the "high speed rail" idea to the US? Image a high speed rail
system between large cities but people still have to own and use a car, drive
200miles to/from the next station. Also either the train stops at every small
town or it will be an express train that leaves the rural areas behind.

IMHO a high speed railway network is not the start but an evolution of an
existing regional rail system/public transportation system that acts as a
feeder and communter infrastructure.

The US lacks those public transpotation systems even in mid-size towns. That's
a bigger problem IMHO.

------
d--b
Something that is never debated when we talk about high speed train in the us:
would it bring development the same way the iron horse brought development in
the 19th century?

I mean, yes the US is sparsely populated (in the middle), but isn't it also
because it doesn't have fast and easy transport system?

Wouldn't a high speed line between San Fran and Portland develop the very
rural regions of Northern California?

High speed train also means high speed cargo transport, isn't that driving
some economical development?

These are not rhetorical questions, i seriously have no idea of the answers,
but it would be nice to see what experts think about that.

------
hassancf
Even third world countries such as Morocco are building rail tracks for bullet
trains...

------
bsaul
A big difference between europe and us is also in the fact that people in
europe tend to live inside the cities, and not just go there to work. Train is
considered faster than plane her in france, because you can go to the
trainstation using subway, and board immediately, whereas you need to leave
your place 2 hours before your flight.

i have the feeling that this advantage would be lost in the us, where people
live in suburbs way more, and so any trip starts at least with a 45 minutes
drive ( not to mention the fact that parking in an airport is probably more
convenient than in a city center).

~~~
michaelchisari
62.7% of the US population lives in only 3.5% of the land mass. We're not as
concentrated in cities as Europe, but we're not all small towners by far. And
we're seeing a mass migration to city centers across the country, while rural
areas are seeing a depopulation.

------
ptr_void
'Why Trains Suck in America' :
[https://youtu.be/mbEfzuCLoAQ](https://youtu.be/mbEfzuCLoAQ)

------
ams6110
_In the U.S., President Obama’s initiative was met by Republican governors
elected in 2010 who, for reasons that had little to do with sanity, resisted
free federal money to fund the completion of intercity rail projects their
(Democratic) predecessors had developed_

It's not insane. Federal money is never "free" it's taken from the people and
always comes with strings attached.

~~~
em3rgent0rdr
In addition, if the rail project might potentially have a negative operating
profit, then it may be rational to refuse it.

------
ravenstine
When other countries play a bigger role in securing the global economy with
military might, maybe we can start building a high speed rail infrastructure.
Otherwise, I don't see an actual need for it. It would be an improvement, for
sure, but all I see is people looking at much smaller countries and assuming
that America is stupid for not doing everything they do.

------
ortusdux
I still resent Rick Scott's decision to reject federal funds for Florida's
high speed rail. It would have been the first high speed rail in the country.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_High_Speed_Corridor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_High_Speed_Corridor)

------
mnm1
I think it's too late for rail. Yes, we lost a generation of development in
rail. We also lost a generation of development for pretty much every other
transportation industry, and thus our whole infrastructure. The article
briefly touches on it. Transportation in general hasn't been a priority for at
least thirty years. I'm not worried about rail. Rail is dead in the US and has
been for a long time. I'm worried about our highways. That's our
infrastructure core, without which the US cannot survive. Not building rail
projects in the US is pretty normal and on par for the downward trajectory
we're on.

Not building and maintaining highways and bridges shouldn't even be an option.
While some upper-class, rich people can afford to live in our cities, they are
a huge minority and most people rely on cars and highways. Outside of a couple
of cities, good city public transportation simply doesn't exist in the US and
won't exist anytime soon.

I think we need to be realistic as to what is possible in the US. High speed
inter-city rail isn't possible. And even if it is, can it compete with the
price of plane tickets? Doubtful. Giving our cities good public transportation
isn't possible. It may have been possible in the past, but not the last few
decades. Having room inside a city for all who want to live there most
certainly isn't possible. Building roads and bridges has now become almost
impossible in many places. I have to wonder what is the plan for the US
transportation infrastructure. As far as I can see, the plan is to let it
deteriorate until it doesn't exist anymore. At least in that sense, it's
consistent with education, social programs, and the rest of our crumbling
society.

~~~
wbl
It's possible. We just don't wanna.

------
a_imho
From the little data I gathered, trains/mass transit seems to be much more
efficient than cars regarding greenhouse emissions. YMMV depending on your
stance on climate change, but I find it sad people dismissing rails so easily
in this thread.

------
ableton
Interestingly a private company is tying to build a high speed train from
Dallas to Houston tx. The great thing is that it would be privately owned so
if it's a flop taxpayers arent on the hook.

------
cartercole
so because every other country is subsidizing the shit out of stuff so should
we? Economics drives our country not pipe dreams of people who want to get the
taxpayers to foot the bill for their new hotness

------
mieses
Rail is a bad idea wrapped in shiny engineering. Read Randal O’Toole
[http://ti.org/antiplanner/](http://ti.org/antiplanner/).

------
bpodgursky
IMO electric and self-driving car technology is advancing rapidly enough that
investment in high-speed rail is going to end up like landline telephones --
it had a time when it was useful, but countries that missed the boat will end
up doing A-OK without them.

Rail is convenient, but it will never ever be as convenient as having a car
take you where you want to be, carry your kids, and carry your stuff around.
As soon as self-driving technology eliminates the hassles of parking and clean
solar-electric tech eliminates the environmental concerns, ridership is going
to tank on all the fixed train lines. It might be 10-15 years out, but I would
be shocked if any of the investments made today in rail ever pay off.

~~~
afuchs
A self-driving car with 1-2 passengers takes up significantly more space than
existing public transportation technologies, such as trains and buses. This
isn't a problem outside of densely populated places. However, as the density
of a place increases, point-to-point transportation become increasingly
ineffective.

Replacing public transportation with point-to-point self-driving technology in
a place like Manhattan, would require building out a ridiculously massive
amount of road capacity.

~~~
zionic
You're thinking like an engineer, where efficieny trumps all.

In the real world people who can will spend money not to be packed in like
sardines with people of questionable hygiene.

Know what happens when the AC is out on your vehicle? You get it fixed.

How about when the AC is out for the 3rd time this month on the bus/train?

"Oh well, that sucks, guess I'm going into work sweaty today"

Mass transit everywhere I've been in the US sucks. It's so bad only the poor
us it, because even the middle-middle class finds it disgusting/inconvenient.

~~~
dba7dba
In Hawaii, the city bus system isn't disgusting. Someone I know told me so.
But yeah everywhere else in US, public transportation is disgusting and
inconvenient.

------
pmurT
Even if we had high-speed rail the gov would regulate it to death like
everything else - they'll make it just as painful as flying. Imagine the TSA
salivating for the mission creep.

------
mickronome
Several comments in this thread almost appear to be constructed to prove the
author right in how the debate derails. It's not much of my concern, but still
I couldn't help to notice something that felt like an unusual occurrence here
on HN, or maybe I'm simply seeing ghosts. I am rather tired to be honest!

Anyway, my flawed observation:

Some sort of deadlock where instead of discussing how to improve the
situation, the discourse get stuck in debating which is the correct reason for
not doing anything, instead of trying to come up with improvements?

Several times arguments are made that a non existent technology will make
current investment pointless in the future, so no investment should be made
now. Isn't that the argument implied by the title of the article?

Obviously, it could be true that future inventions would make it pointless,
but that certainly is not something you can calculate/know off the cuff, if
it's even worth speculating about. Building a high speed rail network take
long enough time that all those possible avenues can probably be explored in
excruciating detail before the first shovel hits the dirt a decade from now if
everything moves quickly.

People are sceptical towards hyperloop, which is understandable in many ways.
But what if it would work? Wouldn't it be worth investing quite a lot of money
simply to figure out if it could work?

Obviously it could potentially only solve a very specific part of the
transportation puzzle, but one that could have quite some positive effects.

Positioning cars and aircraft as more-or-less the only viable ways of
communication for the foreseeable future sounds like an awfully odd position
to me, even for a very sparsely populated country. While, the correct solution
might not be high-speed rail, some variation of it it could still be the best
solution in several instances.

Maybe someone would come up with something like a tethered electrical ground
effect aircraft/train which could take advantage of the sparse population if
they knew there were money to be made. Instead of massive resistance and
cartloads of red tape ?

------
graycat
A guess: Now that Trump is talking about "infrastructure", the passenger train
people are coming out of the woodwork again looking for big subsidies from the
US Federal Government.

Some years ago, for a while I was a prof in Ohio. Well, there was a group all
hot on connecting all the Rust Belt cities -- Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland,
Columbus, Dayton, Cincinnati, Muncie, Akron, Indianapolis, South Bend,
Youngstown, Toledo, etc. with passenger trains. They were really hot.

Look, guys, the US had a very good passenger rail network. Could go by train
from one tiny crossroads to any other, all by train. And people did that. But
soon that whole thing was killed off by, and may I have have the envelope
please? Right, the Model T, etc. Private cars. A lot of the tracks grew up
with weeds.

After WWII, soon, for trips up to 1000 miles, say with the whole family,
people would rather just take the family car. Just after WWII, the passenger
trains were still running, but, no thanks, people would rather take the family
car, e.g., from Florida all the way to Grandma's near Buffalo, NY. As soon as
I got married, my wife and I went to her family farm for Christmas, 900 miles,
by car, car packed with stuff. Plane? Train? Bus? No thanks.

Gee, guys, now with the TSA, no way will I want to take a car full of luggage,
toys, Christmas presents, etc. past the TSA. No way.

For me, for anything like family travel, public mass transportation, no matter
how fast, how roomy, how cheap, how safe, due to the TSA and all the luggage
handling problems, lack of privacy, being legally under the thumb of a lot of
people, rules, bureaucrats, various cases of police, being subject to being
forced to wait in my seat for four hours while whatever is going on, etc., the
answer is no, no way, never, don't bother to ask again.

There are a lot of people and projects there in the woodwork eager to come out
with lots of publicity, reasons, and excuses and eager to scarf up Federal
subsidies. A LOT of people/projects. Clearly there is a whole industry of this
stuff. They are always back in the woodwork, and as soon as they smell money,
and they are good at smelling money, out they come, big publicity drives, etc.

------
em3rgent0rdr
High speed rail doesn't actually provide the eco-benefits over planes that
proponents think it will. And high speed rail is only competitive against
planes and cars at distances less than 500mi. Unfortunately the US is too
sparsely populated and the big cities outside of the coastal corridors are too
spread out for high speed rail to be economically and ecologically sensible.
[http://www.newsweek.com/why-high-speed-trains-dont-make-
sens...](http://www.newsweek.com/why-high-speed-trains-dont-make-sense-74107)

------
giardini
What's the justification for spending on high speed rail vs roads vs air
travel vs doing nothing (Google Car is coming, remember)?

~~~
GrumpyBen
Will the Google Car drive at 200 mph ?

~~~
modeless
No, but it will take you door to door, departing instantly when you're ready
and not before, and it won't stop in between unless you want it to.

~~~
pikzen
*citation needed

The congested road network still happens with Google cars.

~~~
giardini
Does it, even when cars movements are coordinated and all driving automated?
How congested?

Regardless I would want to see a cost-justification of high speed rail vs auto
vs standard train vs buses, etc.

------
graycat
How much money does Amtrak in the US Northeast Corridor make each year, in
ballpark, round numbers? $100 million? $1 million? $1?

------
ensiferum
For americans a train is socialism. They need their V8s for crawling walking
speed on the 4 lane highway burning a ton of fossil fuels. Actually the bigger
the truck the better since it means freedom (or something). ;-)

~~~
taurath
Go walk up to someone in LA or Seattle and ask them if they could would they
take a train into work instead if it cut the time in traffic down. I'll bet
very few people would say no.

~~~
CalRobert
Trains in LA have done well (buses not so much). This is despite the trains
being crowded and not quite as on-time as they ought to be.

405 and 10 are a living hell; plenty of folks inching along them would rather
not be.

[http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/la-ca-cm-
building-...](http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/la-ca-cm-building-
type-expo-line-20170521-story.html)

------
flimflamvir
The first one went OK, the second collapsed the Japanese rail industry. All
require huge subsidies.

America is smart!

------
exabrial
This sounds like a title written by someone that's never visited anywhere but
New York or LA. The USA is very large, and we don't have high population
density except for the Eastern seaboard (where rail seems to work pretty well
there).

Roads are a much better, cheaper, faster, flexible option. We just need a 10x
revolution in: storage density, fast charging, or efficiency.

------
anjbe
I’m going to share my experience with commuter (not high‐speed) rail: the New
Mexico Rail Runner.
[https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Trainroadrunner.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Trainroadrunner.jpg)

The Rail Runner was built in 2006 primarily due to Governor Bill Richardson’s
efforts. It essentially covers two cities, Albuquerque (~500,000 people) and
Santa Fe (the capital, ~70,000 people), which are already connected by
Interstate 25.

I love trains; I recently took Amtrak to LA and back. And I love the Rail
Runner. It’s my favorite way to get to Santa Fe by far. Once I arrive, being
without a car is not too bad: Santa Fe is a fairly walkable city, Albuquerque
has a decent bus system, and a bicycle (which I can take on the train) makes
things a lot easier.

The big problem with the Rail Runner is its cost.

Richardson originally was very vague about the cost, and initial estimates
were (it turns out, a wildly optimistic) sub–$100 million in initial capital.
The state took out a loan to pay for construction. The total cost is now
estimated to be about $800 million. Currently the state Department of
Transportation pays about $25 million a year on the loan; as currently
structured, that will slowly increase to $35 million per year until 2025 and
2026, where the payments jump to $110 million (per year!).

New Mexico is currently in a budget crisis (not just due to the Rail Runner).
([http://fortune.com/2016/12/04/new-medico-budget-
crisis/](http://fortune.com/2016/12/04/new-medico-budget-crisis/)) There have
been special legislative sessions called this year to sort things out, and
there’s conflict between all three branches of our state government. I have no
idea where the DOT will find $80 million in their budget the next ten years,
at least not without serious cuts to our already underfunded highways.

Then there are the operating costs. This is “not so bad.” Revenues only cover
about 10% of operating expenses. But at least the rest is covered (at the
moment) by county taxes, federal grants, and payments for use of the track by
Amtrak and BNSF.

I’ll be cynical: my personal belief is that Richardson intentionally hid the
costs and pushed the Rail Runner as a short‐term publicity stunt for his 2008
Presidential run, without a care as to what it would do to the state ten years
later. It is very like him. (Don’t even get me started on the spaceport.)
[https://www.abqjournal.com/news/state/602848nm10-16-07.htm](https://www.abqjournal.com/news/state/602848nm10-16-07.htm)

The legislature sponsored a study to determine the feasibility of selling the
Rail Runner ([https://lintvkrqe.files.wordpress.com/2015/11/final-
hm-127-s...](https://lintvkrqe.files.wordpress.com/2015/11/final-hm-127-study-
final-report-november-4-2015.pdf)). It concluded that nobody would be willing
to buy it due to low revenues, high operating costs, and the plethora of
exclusivity agreements that would need to be renegotiated (with BNSF, Amtrak,
the pueblos, the federal Department of Transportation…). And selling it
wouldn’t help since it wouldn’t absolve us of the requirement to pay off the
debt. At this point I don’t foresee a solution other than refinancing the loan
(again) to avoid those $100 million cliff payments, at the cost of further
interest payments.

Like I said, I love the Rail Runner, and I really want to see it (or passenger
rail of some sort) succeed in New Mexico. I do think the way the Rail Runner
was handled — intentionally hiding the costs and having no concrete plan to
cover operating costs — is completely unconscionable.

Not that it has to operate at a profit; after all, highways lose money too.
But the Rail Runner loses _so much_ money, and we’re already a poor state. It
is valuable to connect New Mexico’s capital with its largest city. I just feel
like there has to have been a better way to do it. I hope the proposed train
from Las Cruces, NM to El Paso, TX ([http://www.lcsun-
news.com/story/news/local/2017/06/28/study-...](http://www.lcsun-
news.com/story/news/local/2017/06/28/study-proposed-rail-service-las-cruces-
el-paso-would-cost-120-m-430-m/436728001/)) will learn from the mistakes made
with the Rail Runner.

Whew. After all that, I’m curious: what _successful_ rail projects have you
seen, and what makes them successful?

~~~
GFischer
Most rail systems do lose money, but this one sounds pretty bad planning.

The population of the cities being connected is extremely low, and prices are
ridiculously cheap too (2 to 10 dollars?).

100 million was wildly optimistic, French-style light rail was really
expensive too, about 600 million per mile -
[http://www.citymetric.com/transport/rer-or-rer-c-how-
paris-t...](http://www.citymetric.com/transport/rer-or-rer-c-how-paris-
typifies-two-models-cross-city-commuter-train-lines-2704)

The cheapest I can find on Ferropedia for a similar project would be 600
million dollars, so 800 million isn't way over budget. And the fare is 20
euros (more than twice the most expensive fare for the Road Runner).

[http://www.ferropedia.es/wiki/Costos_de_construcci%C3%B3n_de...](http://www.ferropedia.es/wiki/Costos_de_construcci%C3%B3n_de_infraestructura#Costes_de_algunos_corredores_espa.C3.B1oles)

------
taw55
What about the logistics industry?

------
mattfrommars
People keep on forgetting the immense size of the continental USA.

[http://francistapon.com/images/travels/europe/usa/900/TEXAS....](http://francistapon.com/images/travels/europe/usa/900/TEXAS.jpg)

~~~
lsdfkhjaf
People keep on forgetting the immense density of America across it's East
Coast:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_megalopolis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_megalopolis)

The northeast corridor accounts for 60M(!) people in the United States and yet
the rail options are expensive and slow. it still boggles my mind that flying
from Boston to NYC was cheaper by flight than train.

While the US is geographically immense, the population is actually
concentrated pretty well. Obviously rail doesn't work everywhere but if we had
rails serving the Northeast Corridor, Texas (Austin, Dallas, Houston),
California Coast (San Diego -> SF) we would have lines serving highly
trafficked and dense areas.

~~~
greglindahl
That train's as expensive as it is because 54% of people doing rail-or-fly
trips between Boston and NYC take the train. It's value pricing.

