
As the U.S. fantasizes, the rest of the world builds new transport system (2017) - martey
https://www.thetransportpolitic.com/2017/07/01/a-generational-failure-as-the-u-s-fantasizes-the-rest-of-the-world-builds-a-new-transport-system/
======
phlakaton
Let me summarize the argumemts here for convenience:

\- HSR is dumb because it's too expensive to build a HSR from coast to coast

\- HSR is dumb because it's slower than flying

\- HSR is dumb because self-driving cars do everything HSR does, but better

\- HSR is dumb because electric scooters are much better for getting around
town

I am wondering what this mythical HSR is, that electric scooters and coast-to-
coast flights are somehow both the nails in its coffin. Straw men doesn't even
begin to describe it!

HSR is of course complementary to all of the technologies above. Heaven
forfend, though, that we pursue a future transit system in more than one mode
at a time...

~~~
brudgers
High speed rail is a circuit switched network. Air is packet switched. Surface
roads are in between. Generally high local redundancy, occasionally bottle
necked by geography.

There's nothing wrong with circuit switched networks. POTS has great voice
quality. ISDN tends not to drop packets. But we all carry cell phones because
packet switching is more flexible in more places.

------
pseudolus
The article might focus on the US but Canada shouldn't be overlooked for its
own neglect of high-speed rail. The Toronto-Montreal corridor is a clear
candidate for such a service which has been promised onwards of decades now.

~~~
sandworm101
Canada's size, terrain, and population density make it a special case. Ottawa-
toronto might work, but vancouver-calgary would be insanely expensive if even
possible. Linking across the country ... we might as well not bother charging
for tickets and just call it a government project never intended to break
even.

And in the north, spaceX rockets might be cheaper.

~~~
pseudolus
I don't think anyone is seriously considering a cross Canada high speed train
connection. The emphasis has always been, as it is in many other regions, on
short hops lasting up to 3-4 hours over highly trafficked routes. Portions of
the Quebec City to Windsor corridor are ideal candidates for high-speed
connections.

~~~
craigzucchini
Isn't it interesting to think about though? If you could built a coast to
coast—or even half way—high speed transit option that isn't a bus or car, what
would it look like? If you could use existing infrastructure with perhaps
minor changes, what could you build or think of? It's really a domain that
presents insane constraints to work in/on. Infrastructure currently costs
tremendous amounts to build and maintain, the distance is extremely vast, the
terrain is rugged, the climate varies wildly, the population is low and spread
out. What sort of impact could it have on future urban development?

------
joshuaheard
As an American that live in France for several years, the high-speed trains
were great for certain trips, but they wouldn't work in the U.S. because they
are not as efficient. By efficiency I mean cost over time. For instance, to go
from Paris to Bordeaux by car is about 8 hours, the price of gas is $5/gal and
all the freeways are toll roads. Total trip would be about the same to fly. To
Fly is about $500 for one-hour flight. The train is about 8 hours and $100.

In America, gas is $3-4/gal, the flight from LA to SF (about 1 hour) is $200.
Also, don't forget European cities were designed for pedestrians, while in the
US, they were built for cars.

I would say the most efficient way to travel in France is by train, while in
the US, it is by plane.

~~~
melling
Yes, i’ve been hearing it won’t work for about 40 years. You’re wrong, of
course.

Unfortunately, now it’s incredibly expensive to build HSR.

China, the same size as the US, will have 25,000 miles of HSR within a few
years.

Your calculus is wrong but let’s just check back in 2025. At some point, we’ll
realize the advantage that all that HSR gives China.

~~~
DeonPenny
The difference is population density. It make sense for china because popution
center need to pipe huge amounts of people around. That doesn't exist in the
US where cars are more efficient.

~~~
melling
How’s the population density in Spain? They have more HSR than the US.

~~~
DeonPenny
Spain has 3 times the population density of the US. The US would need 900
million people to have the same density.

~~~
melling
I guess we’re lying with statistics.

The population density of Kansas and Montana is quite low. America is quite
large.

However, Los Angeles and New York, San Francisco, etc are much more densely
populated than Spain.

------
brudgers
In 1869, Oakland and Council Bluffs Iowa were joined with a golden spike,
completing the Pacific Railroad. From Oakland, it runs Sacramento, Truckee,
Reno, Ogden, Cheyenne, Lincoln, and finally Omaha across the Missouri from
Council Bluffs. I80 follows the same route today. Not because of travel demand
between Oakland and Cheyenne, Wyoming (population 60k).

Because of geography.

The article asserts France has about 3000km of high speed rail. That will
connect Oakland and Council Bluffs, with just enough left over to cross the
bay to San Francisco. But not from SF to San Jose.

From Council Bluffs to New York, it's another 2000km. That's all the high
speed rail in Germany plus all the high speed rail in Italy (as asserted in
the article). In European terms, it's like building a high speed rail line
from Paris to Moscow. But if the Urals were in between.

The US doesn't have a national high speed rail _network_ because a _national_
high speed rail network doesn't make sense. Between the Canadian and Mexican
borders, there are three geographically reasonable rail routes to the Pacific.

To the north of the I80 route, there's the I90/Great Northern route through
North Dakota, Montana, and Idaho. South of I80 is the I10/ATSF route across
West Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. It is the only all-weather route to the
Pacific in the US. The US obtained it via the Gadsden Purchase in 1853. The
three routes alone would require the US to build the second largest high speed
rail network.

Using the US Interstate system as a first approximation, a US network would
have about 77,000 km of high speed rail line. 77 Germanies or 26 Frances or 3
Europes. On completion, it would be larger than all currently existing and
planned high speed rail.[1]

There are places in the US where high speed rail makes some sense. Again, it's
about geography. Maybe the article's DC to Charlotte is one of them...Dallas
to San Marcos (population 44,000) probably not.

The US is vast. Even at 3x the speed of high speed rail in optimum conditions,
most of it is experienced as fly-over states.

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_high-
speed_railway_lin...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_high-
speed_railway_lines)

~~~
eesmith
Why doesn't the US have a good _regional_ high speed rail network?

~~~
brudgers
The US does not have political subdivision at the regional level (except as
might be reflected at the state level of political subdivision). For example,
New England is not a political subdivision while California might be
considered one incidentally.

At the state level, a high speed rail will never benefit most residents. For
example, a "northeast corridor" line is great for Philadelphia, Manhattan, and
Boston. doesn't do anything for the citizens of Pittsburgh, Albany, and
Springfield.

~~~
eesmith
I don't think it can be as simple as that because the US did have a good
passenger rail system up to the 1950s, with both express limited service and
local lines, without formal regional governments.

Not that there needs to be a formal regional government. The US has interstate
compacts for situations like this.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_compact](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_compact)
even comments "these agreements create a new governmental agency which is
responsible for administering or improving some shared resource such as ...
public transportation infrastructure".

It helpfully links to
[https://www.csg.org/NCIC/MidwestInterstatePassengerRailCompa...](https://www.csg.org/NCIC/MidwestInterstatePassengerRailCompact.aspx)
\- "the Midwest Interstate Passenger Rail Compact brings together state
leaders from across the region to advocate for passenger rail improvements.
Formed by compact agreement in 2000, the compact's current members are
Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North
Dakota and Wisconsin."

and [http://www.drpt.virginia.gov/rail/major-initiatives/va-nc-
hi...](http://www.drpt.virginia.gov/rail/major-initiatives/va-nc-high-speed-
rail-compact/) "The Virginia-North Carolina High Speed Rail Compact was
authorized by the Congress and established through legislation enacted by the
Virginia and North Carolina General Assemblies. The purpose of the Compact is
to examine and discuss strategies to advance multi-state high speed rail
initiatives."

~~~
brudgers
\+ Relative to the current state of US passenger rail service, there is a
_plausible_ argument that the 1950's were better. Relative to the current
state and common imaginary future states, 1950's rail is less plausibly a good
model for transportation infrastructure today. The economics make a fine
grained network with an acceptable level of service untenable...heck facts on
the ground suggest the economics make a course grained network with an
acceptable level of service _generally_ untenable. A course grained passenger
rail network with tenable economics is the exception.

\+ A fine grained passenger rail network still requires about all the roads we
have now. The local restaurant needs a pallet of french fries not a boxcar's
worth.

\+ Neither of the example compacts has executive authority over the
participating states. Advocacy and study, only. They only allow states to
coordinate efforts with respect to federal programs. MIRPC can lobby for
continued Amtrack support [1]. It can't obtain right of way and lay track.

[1]: [http://miprc.org/News/miprc-to-congress-fra-amtrak-
sustain-t...](http://miprc.org/News/miprc-to-congress-fra-amtrak-sustain-the-
federal-state-partnership-for-passenger-rail)

~~~
eesmith
My intent with "a good passenger rail system" was to respond to your earlier
statement "a high speed rail will never benefit most residents", and not focus
on "better".

An express limited service in the 1940s did not benefit most residents,
compared to a local service, in a similar way to high speed service now.

My example of those two compacts was to show that supra-state organizations
can exist with transport goals in mind. As examples of more effective
compacts, the Great Lakes Compact.

There is no need for executive authority over participating states.
International agreements occur between different countries even without an
organization with executive authority over those countries.

Case in point: the Basel tram network provides international service, which
started in 1900 with service to the German Empire. Wilhelm II didn't have
executive authority over Basel, nor Switzerland over then-Sankt-Ludwig.

~~~
brudgers
\+ My opinion about the utility of compacts is that there is no evidence on
the ground that they will lead to interstate high speed rail networks. Beyond
evidence on the ground, the political requirements for interstate high speed
rail is sustained political support for the network in each state in the
network. Assigning a probability (p) of sustained political support to each
state (S) in an interstate network (IN), we have:

    
    
      pIN = pS(1) x pS(2)...pS(n)
    

I consider _intrastate_ high speed rail an optimistic proxy for sustained
political support for _interstate_ high speed rail. In general, that means
pS(i) approximates zero for all 1 <= i <= n. This is based on S from the set
{TX, FL, CA} where the best conditions for _intrastate_ high speed rail
obtain.

\+ The Great Lakes Compact is legally binding. It required approval by each
state's legislature. To me, the politics are radically different. The compact
prevents states from damage by other states. It exists to avoid a tragedy of
the commons where people may die. Rail networks don't have that.

\+ I considered diving into the differences between the 1940's and today as
they relate to passenger rail networks in my previous comment.

Local passenger rail isn't viable because most rural communities have much
lower populations today than in the first half of the 20th century and because
transportation alternatives are much better in rural areas. Hopefully, we
agree on the second point.

The demographic shift in rural areas has a strong labor component related to
mechanization of agriculture. In the midwest, a farm family in 1920 could work
about a quarter section of corn (160 acres). Today a family can work about two
sections (1280 acres). A small town rail station in 1930 might have served a
township with 3000 residents. Now it might serve 1000.

In the South's cotton country, the demographics are even more substantial. In
1940 a share cropper family could work about 20 acres. Mechanization moved
major cotton production to large fields in places like Texas. The twenty acre
fields were mostly converted to timber and the share cropper shacks left to
decay. Small towns that once were the center for several thousand locals are
now empty buildings with a few hundred locals nearby.

Local rail in rural areas is economically untenable. The express trains of
1950 worked because there were finer grained networks feeding it. Today, the
fine grained network for rail is the same as for air and automobile. It's the
automobile.

That's why _intrastate_ high speed rail isn't being built. The proposed
Orlando-Tampa route still required a car to get from Azalea Park to the
Orlando station and another car to get from the Tampa station to Clearwater
Beach.

\+ One of the major tradeoffs between rail and auto transportation is
scheduling. Scheduling trains efficiently is a job-shop problem and is NP-
hard. Adding efficient public transit at each end of the Orlando-Tampa line to
avoid the need for an automobile adds terms to an already exponential
scheduling problem.

The way to mitigate latency in scheduling problems is not cleverness. It's
adding substantial surplus capacity to smooth out peaks. It's making the
system generally inefficient. Amtrack's poor level of service is a natural
result of focusing on efficiency. High speed rail systems designed around
efficiency will not beat the mathematics. Nobody is making a high speed rail
case around high availability because it's politically infeasible.

It's probably economically infeasible as well. Rail is a circuit switched
network. If it is designed to handle 1000 passengers per hour, handling 1001
passengers takes two hours not 1.001 hours.

~~~
eesmith
Your response affirms my earlier statement that "I don't think it can be as
simple as [a lack of 'political subdivision at the regional level']". I thank
you for your more detailed response now, which I do not object to.

------
manicdee
Also worth noting: where Europe designed their rail system to reduce
fatalities by improving control of trains on the track, the US chose to make
trains tougher to withstand the completely avoidable accidents.

As a result no European train can run on US rails (technical compatibility
aside) because trains like HSV are lightweight and do not meet US design
rules.

------
lunchbreak
Wendover had a good video about China's rail network a while ago. [1]

Major points are:

1\. China is willing to build loves that aren't self sustainable - whereas the
USA isn't (and the US doesn't factor in the social benefits)

2\. China's airspace is mostly military - leading to only small flight
corridors and therefore significant delays for flights - making trains more
reliable

3\. China is willing to make train lines that make no sense beyond connecting
areas that are not as friendly to the government to areas that are in the hope
of increasing government support in those areas

[1] [https://youtu.be/0JDoll8OEFE](https://youtu.be/0JDoll8OEFE)

~~~
tanilama
Maybe US should rethink a little bit why it takes until 2029 to build a
railway in between SF and LA, maybe the due diligence is exaggerated and wear
the whole process down?

~~~
masonic

      it takes until 2029 to build a railway in between SF and LA
    

SF to LA has had rail service for _over 140 years_.

The failure of HSR in CA has nothing to do with "the US" and everything to do
with graft internal to CA.

------
StorytellerCZ
Texas Central is another interesting private initiative:
[https://www.texascentral.com/](https://www.texascentral.com/)

------
DeonPenny
I've never got the importance of HSR for the US. It's to sparsely populated.
While europe can have trains going from big cities like Berlin to France you'd
have to go from NYC to Chicago, NYC to LA, LA to SF, Chicago to Houston. The
routes would be huge. It makes no sense.

------
yason
One thing high speed rail, or any rail for that matter, requires is dense
walkable cities.

If the rail link requires driving to the station and renting a car at the
destination it's not going to be comparable with one where you can walk or
take the tram/subway to move within the endpoints, and there it loses the
appeal of convenience.

The best thing that trains offer is direct connection from one city centre to
another city centre. These centres need to be such that they have places to go
to, reachable by at most public transit and a bit of walking. If they aren't
then your single train trip effectively becomes three separate trips.

------
rdl
We have $2/gallon gas, from massive domestic production (and similar or lower
prices for Jet-A). There are traffic congestion reasons for mass transit in
cities, but we're pretty sorted for inter-city.

~~~
_delirium
Traffic congestion is a pretty big issue for intercity too in some regions.
Dallas-Houston is a mere 240 miles but often takes 5 hours to drive. Even in
"light" traffic, 4 or so is common.

You can do a lot better than that with even decently upgraded "legacy" rail,
never mind a Shinkansen/TGV type system. For example, London-Manchester is 210
miles, and trains take only 2 hours.

~~~
kiran-rao
Is there a solution to the last mile problem? It's every difficult to get to
the final destination in sprawled suburban cities even if there's a direct
center-center high speed rail line.

~~~
sampo
Build dense cities.

For example the Tokio-Osaka Shinkansen averages 130 mph over the whole route
with 15 stops in between the end stations. You could get from midtown
Manhattan to downtown Boston in 1h40min. Make that 1h15min, if the train
didn't have stops between NYC and Boston.

So visiting Boston could be almost as fast as visiting the far end of Queens,
from Manhattan.

------
andys627
I would like to preemptively suggest that the author is focusing on dense
areas of the country. He is suggesting high speed rail between Portland-
Seattle, Dallas-Houston, NYC-DC, etc. Not Los Angeles-Chicago or DC-Seattle.

~~~
shdh
Build small parts of the network first Larger portions later

~~~
jboles
Exactly, start with linking neighbor cities where the density supports it.
Once the infrastructure and expertise is in place, then it starts to make
sense to link the existing lines together into a bigger network.

------
dang
This was posted last year:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14678504](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14678504)

------
aj7
USA uses fleets of 737s and A320s. The mean distances are right.

------
Havoc
Seriously? Author plots kilometers built absolute numbers for China and Italy
onto the same graph?

Could someone politely inform said author that China is a little bit bigger
than Italy.

The part about the US needing to wake up rings true though.

~~~
craigzucchini
That's a good point, but I think the point the author was going for is that
the U.S is comparable and much smaller countries in physical size are far
surpassing them in absolute numbers.

------
tomohawk
High speed rail is a non-starter in the US, except for in certain regions.

It's 2000 miles from Chicago to LA. Optimistically, if you had a train that
averaged 200 miles an hour, it would still take 10 hours. That's just not
competitive.

~~~
cobookman
100% spot on. Many don't realize just how large the us is.

Going from SF to ATL is longer distance than Portugal to Belarus.

~~~
reindeerer
China is the same size as US. Somehow, they have HSR

~~~
melling
They have a lot of HSR.

About 15,000 miles at the moment, with another 10,000 on the way.

~~~
Gibbon1
China spent a lot of money over the last ten years on HSR.

The US spent a lot of money on war.

------
soheil
Part of me thinks the word "fantasize" in the title is referring to the
efforts by Elon Musk with the Boring company, Hyperloop, SpaceX intra-earth
travel thus I'd like to see arguments for why that is when in fact Boring
company is making non-stop progress given how busy Musk is and SpaceX
constantly advancing the edge of what is possible with space tech, fantasy?
Not one bit.

~~~
andrepd
"Musk" was not mentioned or even alluded to in the piece, so maybe it's not a
good idea to try to shoehorn the man into every situation.

Also, wrt both Boring Company and Hyperloop, "fantasy" is exactly the word to
describe them. Outlandish projects, with a lot of buzz and PR but no sense or
reason and many real problems, some fatal.

~~~
soheil
He's been in the news almost constantly talking about both those projects and
just announced a milestone with the Boring company, so I don't think it is
completely out there to believe the author might have been referring to Musk's
efforts. After all you think both those projects by Musk are outlandish and
would use the word "fantasy" to describe them maybe so did the author, but
forgot to mention Musk specifically or chose not to for whatever reason.
Suffice it to say I don't think they are fantasies at all and not sure why
people keep characterizing such Herculean efforts that require so much will
and drive as such and are so keen to so easily dismiss them instead of
admiring them.

------
beerlord
I would prefer to live in the US than any of these countries funding HSR.
Electric cars and electric scooters are enough to get around the city and
around the state, with flights for anything much longer than that. Autonomous
vehicles available via subscription will make that even better.

~~~
techsupporter
The problem is that flights are not sustainable much longer. Flying uses an
astounding amount of subsidized fossil fuels, requires infrastructure that
takes up quite a large amount of space, and is increasingly both inconvenient
and intrusive. They're also a separate matter from the last-mile problem that
bicycles, scooters, and autonomous vehicles aim to solve (assuming we can
structure AV use in a way that, during the transition period towards full
subscription use, doesn't increase traffic like so-called ridesharing taxis do
now).

The United States can be one of these countries funding HSR. Countries that
are quite pleasant to live in--and some that aren't, depending on your outlook
--are already funding HSR and already have expansive rail networks. There's no
reason we can't, too.

~~~
ams6110
Commercial air travel is more efficient in fuel usage than driving, per
passenger mile.

~~~
TheCoelacanth
Fossil fuel powered driving will also not be sustainable long-term.

