
How fast could you travel across the U.S. in the 1800s? - MikeCapone
http://www.mnn.com/green-tech/transportation/stories/how-fast-could-you-travel-across-the-us-in-the-1800s
======
blackhole
A few months ago my friend saw an ad in his university newspaper for a
hackathon that was scheduled to start the next day. I happened to not have
anything scheduled that weekend, and he asked me if I could team up with him
to participate.

The thing was, he lives in California, and I live in Washington. He found one
last remaining seat on the last flight headed out that night and bought a
ticket for me. By 9 PM, I was stepping off an airplane roughly 1600 miles from
home. When I woke up that morning, I had no idea I'd sleep on a couch in a
dorm room at SJSU.

We seriously live in the future.

~~~
melling
I live 4 miles from work. I left my house at 8:20am and arrived in my office
at 9:25am.

Try to grab a train from San Francisco to LA. That's about 400 miles. How long
would you expect that to take in this future of which you speak?

~~~
rachelbythebay
Perhaps the future isn't evenly distributed.

Regarding the article, I'd like to see them plot the rate-of-change: how long
it took to go from a month to a week to a day and so on, and then continue it
into the present day. I think we've hit something of a cap on speed.

~~~
pyre
Not necessarily. IIRC, outside of the East Coast corridor, the rails only
allow the trains to go ~35mph. There are also high-speed / bullet trains as
well, none of which are available in the US (for now).

~~~
waterlesscloud
The train from LA to Flagstaff hits 70+mph at times, though the average is
around 50mph once you factor in stops and waiting for freight to pass.

The biggest thing slowing down US passenger trains is that the routes are
leased from freight lines and the freight trains take priority.

------
brudgers
The correctness of attributing of the improvement in speed of travel between
1800 and 1830 to railroads is dubious. This shows the extent of common carrier
rail lines in 1835:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:USRail1835.jpg>

What improved travel was the National Road, the Federal Roads, and the
Military Road.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Road_%28United_States%...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Road_%28United_States%29)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Road_%28Cherokee_lands%...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Road_%28Cherokee_lands%29)

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Road_%28Creek_lands%29>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackson%27s_Military_Road>

~~~
codewright
<http://railroads.unl.edu/views/sources/1850%20Expansion.jpg>

[http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/19-century/railroads-187...](http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/19-century/railroads-1870.jpg)

Probably the railroads.

~~~
brudgers
That's 1850. Between 1800 & 1830 much of the Southeast was still Native
American nations, e.g. the portion of Alabama between Montgomery and the
Georgia was the last part of the Creek Nation ceded in 1832.

The Federal and National Roads allowed stage travel, and that's what improved
speed...for those who weren't walking. By 1850, other than the Seminoles, the
Native American nations in the East had been conquered and rail road motive
power had advanced.

------
smacktoward
For another interesting look at the subject of travel times, check out
Stanford's ORBIS (<http://orbis.stanford.edu/#map>), which lets you estimate
travel times from one point in the Roman Empire circa 200 AD to another, based
on several common modes of travel.

What's fascinating is how little transportation changed between 200 and 1800.
Sixteen hundred years pass and the basic means of getting around are still the
same: foot, horse, cart, boat. Then in the hundred years after that there
comes an explosion of new options: bicycle, rail, automobile, airplane. Gives
some perspective on how relatively new the travel technologies we take for
granted today actually are.

~~~
sliverstorm
Most of our newfound forms of travel depend on engines, which haven't been
around long. That's the reason travel was fairly stagnant for so long, IMO.

Bicycles on the other hand have been around for a while. Why didn't they see
more prolific use in Europe between 200 and 1800? I speculate lack of good
enough roads. An oxcart road would not be the most pleasant place to ride an
old-fashioned bicycle.

~~~
jlgreco
I suspect bicycles are one of those things that really seem obvious in
retrospect but for some reason were invented well after the time when they
were first feasible.

If you gave someone a bunch of gold, the ability to speak fluent Latin, and
kicked them back into ancient Rome, I am sure they could commission the
creation of a bicycle. It wouldn't be very good (no rubber for the wheels for
starters, maybe replace that with several layers of leather? You might be able
to make a leather belt-drive too.), but the general idea should have worked.

Another example is the phonograph. You can make a rudimentary phonograph with
some very very basic clockwork, some wax, a needle, and a sheet of something
taught and thin (I bet parchment would work fine.) The biggest issue would
probably be figuring out how to present it without being burnt as a witch. But
nobody did it until the late 19th century.

~~~
evgen
In what way is a bicycle an improvement over a horse as long as the
infrastructure for maintaining a horse already exists? I am sure it could have
been built but why bother? A phonograph provides a service that would have
been unknown at the time and is a much better plan to send back with your time
traveller.

~~~
dredmorbius
Horses must be bred, raised, trained (as does the rider), fed, watered,
stabled, mucked, cleaned, saddled, and shod. Streets traversed by horses must
be cleaned (the first urban transport pollution crisis revolved around horse
and other draft animal dung, a/k/a "soil"). They're only useful for traveling
so far, so coach roads and mail services (such as the Pony Express) needed
frequent changing stations where horses could be switched and rested (every 10
miles for the Pony Express). Horses were a major expense and even during times
when they were principle land transport were the privilege of the rich, or
farmers who relied on horses for productive capacity.

Once built, a bike requires minimal maintenance, is _vastly_ cheaper than a
horse, can be ridden with minimal skill (and only the rider, not the bike,
requires training), and can be stored in a house or small shed. Bicycle
manufacture is highly amenable to mass production techniques (horses, not so
much). Other than reinflating tyres and oiling chains, little maintenance is
required. On good roads, a bike can easily be ridden 20-40 miles by even a
cyclist of moderate skill, and single-day rides of 200-300 miles are
attainable. Even loaded with camping gear, a bike can be ridden 60-90 miles
per day, continuously, reasonably. Cargo bikes can carry substantial loads
locally. Bike jitneys compete with horse-drawn vehicles for human carriage.

Horses or oxen, particularly teamed, can carry much heavier loads. In parts of
the world, oxcarts, fitted with modern truck wheels and axles, still compete
with automobiles for drayage.

~~~
Mvandenbergh
You're right that bicycles are amenable to mass production techniques, but
those weren't invented until the early 19th century at the earliest
(specifically the invention of interchangeable parts and the 'American System'
in the American arms industry). Realistically, these techniques weren't
widespread until the last few decades of the 19th century.

This latter period is sometimes called the Second Industrial Revolution and is
characterised by the invention of interchangeability, assembly lines,
automated jigs for machining, and the use of electricity and non-coal
petroleum fuels.

While the first industrial revolution produced coal and water powered
machines, these machines were still themselves made by craftsmen. The
introduction of interchangeable parts meant that it was no longer neccesary
for a craftsman to hand fit the various components* together - you could make
thousands of bicycle wheels and thousands of bicycles and fit them all
together with almost no difficult to learn custom fitting. Automated jigs made
it possible to mass produce standard sized parts.

(*) It's not even clear that the idea of a 'component' is a very useful one
before interchangeable parts were invented because turning a barrel (even if
it had already been bored), a stock, and various parts of the action into a
rifle isn't something that a non-gunsmith can do. These were 'components' only
in the sense that a felled tree is a 'component' of a timber house.

There's a video on Youtube of a gunsmith making a rifle the way it would have
been made in the era of the American revolution - in the very early years of
the first industrial revolution - and you can see how difficult and finicky it
is.

~~~
dredmorbius
I was answering the question of advantages of bicycles over horses, not on the
feasibility of their production in ancient times.

That said, history is interesting.

Adam Smith's _Wealth of Nations_ describes mass-production techniques,
including specialization, special tools adapted to single sub-tasks, and a
style of production approaching an assembly-line (work produced at stations,
with the pieces moving from station to station. In 1776.

The Chinese were employing mass production techniques in the manufacture of
crossbos in the Warring States period (475 BC - 201 BC):
[http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/maney/aaa/2008/0000000...](http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/maney/aaa/2008/00000005/00000002/art00003)

Modern mass production dates to 1803 and production of sailing blocks (used to
raise and lower rigging on ships) in England, from which it spread to the US
for clock and armaments manufacture. Eli Whitney (of cotton gin fame)
attempted mass armaments production in 1798 but failed to achieve quantity
output for another 8 years. Refinements in metalurgy, scientific management,
steam and electric power, etc., produced further advances -- as with most
developments, the seeds were planted early and incrementally developed over
time.

As I note in another post, the two specific advances that really made the
bicycle possible were advanced metalurgy and vulcanized pneumatic tyres. Both
of these weren't particularly feasible until they actually emerged. That said,
high-quality Damascus steel dates to 300 BC. The Greeks and Romans had and
used coal (used in the production of both steel and synthetic rubber). Rubber
was known as far back as 1600 BC, but among the Mayans in South America (it
wasn't introduced to Europe until 1736): <http://www.essortment.com/history-
rubber-21100.html>

But the biggest trigger for widespread bicycle adoption was probably
socioeconomic, not technological. By the late 19th Century, a middle class
with both discretionary income and free time had emerged. And though bikes
were used for utility (commuting, errends, light transport), the real driver
was recreation. The presence of intense socioeconomic stratification, slavery,
feudal systems, and the like, had a serious damping effect on both creation
and adoption of new technolgies and products.

------
chernevik
Very interesting. But the focus on New York probably skews the analysis a lot,
particularly in early years when rivers and canals would have been important
routes. Notice the bend of the 1800 curves up the eastern NY border, and into
southeastern Pennsylvania? I bet those reflect the use of the Hudson and
Delaware rivers for travel, and possibly linkage to other rivers like the
Ohio, Susquehanna and Potomac. Likewise I suspect that in 1830 Chicago was
probably closer to New Orleans, on the Mississippi, than it was to New York.

Likewise the transport of goods, rather than passengers, was probably more
important in forming perceptions of distance, as that's what would drive
commerce and thus ongoing relationships.

Attention to goods and other point pairings probably matter a lot when you get
to 1857. I expect internal communications, of goods, in the South reflected
high proximity to the nearest port, and that NY was essentially on the other
side of the moon. Whereas the North was probably much more homogenous in its
travel times (proportionately more railroad, less river) -- but largely
isolated from the South. Which would have done a lot to foster disunion among
the two geographies.

That view would probably also say a lot about the border states, I bet that
would show these were essentially islands unto themselves.

~~~
dredmorbius
New York was the commercial and population center of the 13 Colonies and early
US, a position it never really ceded, though New York State was surpassed in
population by California and then Texas in the 1960s and 1980s. Point-to-point
travel from other locations would have been largely similar to

Water travel _was_ the first "highway" system in the US, first along the
seacoast, then along rivers, then along canals (notably the Erie Canal, opened
in 1825). The Saint Lawrence Seaway, offering deepwater access to Chicago and
northern Minnesota, and the Mississippi-Missouri-Ohio river systems, offering
access to roughly 1/3 of the present conterminious United States, was (and is)
hugely important to commerce.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mississippi_watershed_map_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mississippi_watershed_map_1.jpg)

Rail, then highway, then air travel are faster than ships and barges, but if
you want to maximize ton-miles per hour, you bulk-load or container-load a
ship or barge. Coal, grain, and other bulk goods simply cannot be moved
economically by other means, and issues such as the lack of water flow on the
Mississippi River will have huge knock-on effects on commerce.

During the Civil War, the Union focused a great deal of effort on blockading
and controlling southern ports, particularly Savannah and New Orleans, through
which the bulk of Confederate exports (and revenues) flowed. Chocking off the
South's access to finance had a great deal to do with eventual Union victory.

------
arscan
I've seen a couple of these kinds of visualizations over the years. I think
they are really fascinating... here's one that shows how long it will take to
travel to the nearest city of 50,000:

<http://www.newscientist.com/gallery/small-world>

There are definitely still some very remote places on this planet.

------
jetti
The thing that amazes me is that the map hasn't really changed if you are
going by rail. My grandma lived in Colorado Springs and my mom and I used to
drive there to see her for Thanksgiving because flights were too expensive.
Leaving out of Chicago, it would take about 15 to 18 hours of driving to get
to Colorado Springs. We would try to make the trip all at once and as a tall
teen, it would be miserable being stuck in the passenger seat of a smaller two
door convertible for so long. I asked my mom why don't we take the train and
her response shocked me. Not only was the train from Chicago to Colorado
Springs more expensive than flying, it was a 24 hour trip as well. If you look
at the map from 1930, it it shows as about 1 day from Chicago to
Denver/Colorado Springs area.

~~~
dalke
By itself that isn't so surprising. After all, the trip by horse-drawn coach
hasn't improved much either.

Cars are point-to-point. Berlin to Paris by train is about 12 hours. By car
it's about 10, because there's no need to stop and change. While
Frankfurt->Paris is 4 hours by non-stop ICE, and 5 by car.

~~~
masklinn
> Berlin to Paris by train is about 12 hours. By car it's about 10, because
> there's no need to stop and change.

Actually, Berlin to Paris by train is 12h if you take direct night trains.
During the day, the best trips are ~8h15 with 1 train change (Paris Nord
through Köln [Thalys + ICE] or Paris Est through Mannheim [TGV + ICE])

~~~
monksy
You forgot to mention that it IS possible to make a 17 minute connection time
with this :). My dad and I only 3... it was amazing.

~~~
masklinn
Did you reply to the wrong comment? I can't see the relation between my
comment and your response.

~~~
monksy
Eh it was in response to the Paris->Berlin train and that you can make
connections with TGV+DBahn versus Amtrak.

------
bane
I think it's worth it for anybody to take a long haul passenger rail trip at
least once. I took one that lasted about 80 hours (about 40 each way) and it
really was a struggle to keep yourself engaged the entire way.

On a side note, provisioning long haul rail in the age of steam must have been
an incredible logistics exercise, on-top of that moving mail and other
information around the country. Imagine not knowing that a new law was passed
for 6 weeks!

~~~
alexkus
I've done two 24 hour (one way) train journeys, they're fantastic. Paris to
Lisbon (for honeymoon) changing trains to Iberian gauge at Irun/Hendaye. And
Viedma to Bariloche with the desolation of the pampas and the stunning views
as you approach the mountains. I've also done a 3 night 4 day ferry through
the Chilean Fjords from Puerto Montt down to Puerto Natales (in order to go do
the "W" in Torres del Paine). So much stunning scenery to look at (and a bar
at night!).

Travelling in Argentina many people use coaches to go long distances between
cities as air travel is so much more expensive. You can get a coach from
Puerto Iguazu to Ushuaia if you've got a spare 60 odd hours. The coaches are
surprisingly comfy with big reclining seats that are not far off being full
beds. We mainly did 12-14h overnight trips between cities so we got some sleep
and saved on a night's accommodation.

~~~
secalex
Try the Amritsar to New Dehli overnight. For the real experience, try second
class, where my friend and I shared a small cubby with a family of five (all
flights cancelled for weather, no first class left).

That'll make you appreciate the Shinkansen or ICE networks.

~~~
justincormack
Ah yes, spent 3 days on a train in India. First night with nowhere to sleep
due to double booking.

------
arbuge
The 1930s railroad map is about the same as what you'd experience doing a road
or rail trip today. It's air travel that has improved since then. Concerning
air travel, the situation there regarding travel time hasn't improved much in
the last 40 years or so ever since commercial jet service first appeared.

Costs have of course come way down.

~~~
cstross
Note, however, that it's rail travel in North America that has been static
since 1930 -- if you applied the same exercise to Western Europe you'd see
dramatic improvements in surface travel times since 1960, with the spread of
electrification and in-cab signaling and then the expansion of the TGV, LGV
and ICE networks.

~~~
masklinn
Indeed. Although there would be little point for the distance involved
(compared to air travel), a cross-US high-speed rail line using the best
existing technology on a non-stop trip would go through in ~15h (the
Wuhan–Guangzhou line non-stop service averaged 194mph station to station,
although non-stop service has ended and the best average commercial train
service has gone back to the french LGV Est with 174mph)

~~~
jeltz
For traveling from coast to coast there would be little point, but for shorter
distances within the US high-speed rail should beat air travel.

~~~
waterlesscloud
I dunno. 15 hours in relative comfort might win sometimes over 4 hours of
crampedness and annoyance.

The bigger question would be price, which I suspect would be higher than
average air fares.

~~~
dalke
I've tried both, for the Sweden<->Germany route. I've usually been
disappointed that the train was more expensive than a flight. The train has
much fewer luggage restrictions, but lugging lots of luggage around when
changing trains is also a hassle, while with flights they do that for you.
With 4 hours of travel, you don't need to worry about food. With 15, you do.
Though you can bring a full meal, including drinks and a knife, on the train.
Plus, there's AC power for the laptop.

My break-even point is at about 6-8 hours by train, vs. a plane. That gets me
to Hamburg.

------
tolos
Original page: <http://imgur.com/Mokjd>

from "Atlas of the historical geography of the United States" (1932)

Page here:
[http://quod.lib.umich.edu/g/genpub/abl7462.0001.001/390?view...](http://quod.lib.umich.edu/g/genpub/abl7462.0001.001/390?view=image)

ToC: <http://quod.lib.umich.edu/g/genpub/abl7462.0001.001?view=toc>

------
jnsaff2
"As you can see in the map above, in 1800, it took a whole day to barely get
outside of the city"

Considering the traffic, not much has changed for people with four wheels.

------
tazzy531
I just finished reading the book "Nothing Like It In the World: The Men Who
Built the Transcontinental Railroad 1863-1869"
([http://www.amazon.com/Nothing-Like-World-
Transcontinental-18...](http://www.amazon.com/Nothing-Like-World-
Transcontinental-1863-1869/dp/0743203178)). It talks about the building of the
transcontinental railroad. The railroad greatly changed the shape of the
country due to the fact that within a span of a few years, travel times across
the country dropped from months to a week.

What is particularly interesting about this was how similar the methodology
that they used was to the Lean Startup methodology. With the way that the
Railroad Act was structured, there was significant award for moving fast.
While they were in the wilderness, it was rather difficult/expensive getting
supplies. They used lower quality cottonwood ties to build out fast knowing
that once the railroads were built, higher quality replacements could be
brought in for far cheaper.

Anyways, I'd highly recommend this book for those of you in the startup scene.

------
michael_miller
It's depressing how little travel time has changed in the past several
decades. The Boeing 747 was introduced in 1970, and we're still traveling at
around Mach 0.85. In the past four decades, we haven't made any significant
improvements to travel time. How sad is that, when in the span of 3 decades in
the 1830s, rail travel time doubled?

I think (hope) that we're on a path to change this in the near future. The
main reason for our lack of advancement in travel time is the cost of
gasoline. The Concorde demonstrated that supersonic transport was technically
possible, but economically impossible. What will change the landscape is
electric planes. This is not a fantasy - there are several companies with
(somewhat) viable piston planes being engineered right now.

The first company is Beyond Aviation (www.­beyond-­aviation.­com) which is
producing an electric varient of the venerable Cessna 172 (most popular plane
produced, the default trainer option for pilots). It's not a perfect plane --
only 2 people can ride in it, and it's designed for flight schools, not for
cruising around, but it's a big step forward for aviation.

The second company is Pipistrel, which is developing the Panthera
(<http://www.pipistrel.si/plane/panthera/technical-data>). The Panthera
Electro is a huge step in the right direction. Although it only seats 2, and
cruises at 118 knots, it can go for 215NM. This is just shy of NYC -> DC.
Imagine if you could travel between these cities for essentially free (solar
power).

On the more viable replace-business-jets route, Elon Musk has stated that he
wants to build a VTVL electric jet. From what he's stated, it sounds like his
main approach to overcoming the lack of energy density is flying higher.
Current jets are limited to efficient operation at ~35k feet because the
oxygen density any higher is too low for an ICE to operate. Current li-ion
batteries, however, don't need oxygen to operate! So they can go to
50,60,70,80k feet for reduced drag and operate just as efficiently as if they
were at 35k feet. Musk has stated that he thinks battery density needs to
double before this jet can become a reality (and has shown that battery
density doubles once every ~10 years historically).

I'm extremely optimistic about the future of aviation. As soon as we can hook
up cheap (nuclear, coal, wind, solar) and efficiently generated (~2x
efficiency gains at large plants) power to planes, the cost of flying will
take a huge drop.

~~~
starpilot
None of the electric aircraft you mention will have performance approaching
that of any commercial jetliner. Not in speed, range, and definitely not on
cost. It will be that way for a very long time due to the dismal energy
density of batteries next to fossil fuels. You know how most powerplants
generate power? Turbines, like these GE ones derived from their own jet
engines: [http://www.ge-
energy.com/products_and_services/services/gas_...](http://www.ge-
energy.com/products_and_services/services/gas_turbines_power_generation_services/index.jsp)
.

Higher altitude isn't everything for speed. You need to generate high-speed
exhaust to produce thrust. A gas turbine compresses air and burns it so that
explosively shoots out the back. How do you generate this electrically without
combustion to raise the pressure? You can't just spin the turbine faster; the
blade tips will go supersonic and efficiency will plummet, not to mention
material stresses. Supersonic wind tunnels mechanically compress air into huge
tanks, sometimes taking weeks to store enough pressure for minutes of runtime,
but that obviously wouldn't work for aircraft.

Jets already produce power efficiently (constantly running at nearly the same
RPM, never idling in traffic) so there's much less incentive to create
electric aircraft. The cost of energy from an electric aircraft in $/joule
could be _higher_ than that of a fueled one because you're introducing an
additional energy conversion. Gas/coal -> turbine -> battery -> turbine versus
gas -> turbine. You're also not getting the range benefit from burning off
fuel and lightening the aircraft.

You shift argument from "aircraft are too slow" to "aircraft are too
inefficient," going electric won't fix either. There are applications for
electric aircraft, mainly low-speed, long-endurance aircraft that can recharge
from solar power without landing, and perhaps more maintainable private
aircraft. These will not be challengers to the 0.85 mach 747 though.

~~~
caf
_A gas turbine compresses air and burns it so that explosively shoots out the
back_

The high-bypass turbofans used on jet airliners produce most of their thrust
by using shaft power to drive a fan that directly accelerates the air. Thrust
from the engine exhaust itself contributes a smaller fraction.

With electric ducted fans, presumably you would have a higher number of
smaller-diameter fans.

(That's not to say that I think that large electric passenger aircraft are
going to be feasible anytime soon - I don't).

------
johngalt
Travel infrastructure seems like a 'chicken or egg' problem. Why build a rail
line to the middle of nowhere? Conversely how will towns develop if people
can't reach them? Much of the development of the heartland US was bootstrapped
by the transportation/rail needs between the east and west coasts.

I wonder how different the US would be today without the CA gold rush. Or if
the gold rush had been somewhere closer to the eastern seaboard like the
Appalachians.

------
berkay
Improvements between 1857 and 1930 is truly impressive (6 weeks to 3 days from
NY to CA). The lack of progress since then (1930 to 2013, almost the same
amount of time) is stark; it still takes 3 days to get to CA from NY by train.
Almost no investment in railroads since US started building highways.

------
mmanfrin
I wish there were a 1848 date in there -- before the gold rush. The difference
in time between 1830 and 57 are dramatic, and I think most of that happened in
the few years after the rush.

------
mnemonicsloth
Two Words: Donner Party

They did eventually get where they were going. So worst-case travel times have
improved even more than these common-case data suggest.

