I was gonna comment “fuck cars” but then I checked where I was.
Fuck cars.
Thing is that I live near a city that has this (ok not train travel that could replace plane travel) and I just want to be able to afford to live in it.
–rural areas U.S.A has entered the chat– We need those trains, the stations they serve, and last mile fully electric self-driving vehicles to get our older citizens to their doctor’s appointments in the larger cities, and to and from the fancy train stations, and not have them be made to remember to reserve a seat 3-5 days in advance, and be waiting 45 minutes for a bus to show up to take them where they need to be and then another 45 to get back home. Also, last mile fully electric self-driving vehicles for round-trips to grocery stores around town, TIA.
Neighborhood electric vehicles are available. Rural USA can try electric buses. Increasing numbers of buses on routes will help. USA older folk are very un healthy. They are obese. Many are unable to walk in their own and need assistance. This is mostly unique to USA.
honestly trains that are more affordable than airplanes is super exciting for me
To be fair that’s how it is in a lot of countries.
God damn I’d love that. My country has been trying to build a ferry free west coast. A road from southern Norway, along the coast and up to Trondheim. Back in 2012 they decided to green-light the project, but it’s still being argued about.
One of my issues with the whole project is how we’re not building any form of infrastructure based around trains. It’s cars. The geography is really harsh here, but adding train tracks by the road would be more future proof than just highways.
Self driving is already here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_Rapid_Transit_(Singapore)
I want trains so people can have cross country road trips on the weekend and not have to stay in their small hometown for the rest of their lives
No, sorry, only cities can have trains, because traditional wisdom™©®¹ says the physics of trains literally stop working outside cities.
If you tried to do something like that, youvwoukd risk damaging the fundamental laws of reality! Imagine if, like, the weak force or gravity or the ability for oxygen to form ionic bonds just got suddenly 30% weaker. You train people are such blind mad zealots, that you would risk this.
¹a Chrysler brand!
I lived in Connecticut. I used to live in a city outside the capital, with transport available all the time. Then I moved to the sticks, 50 miles away. Same state, just the most rural part.
In a group I did, they showed a woman being a success story from the program. In the video, she was using our bus systems in rhe cities. 4/5 people chirped up and aggreed, “hey we don’t have busses in Connecticut this video is fake”. I was like, no yeah, we have busses, just not here.
So many people I met in that area, are born, live, work, retire, and die, without ever stepping foot out of their county.
It’s sad.
to be fair, public transit doesn’t cover even close to the majority of any non-east coast state
So many people I met in that area, are born, live, work, retire, and die, without ever stepping foot out of their county.
It’s sad.
It’s not sad. It’s called right to self-determination, and it means that people are free to live a boring life.
If you have access and the ability to do something and choose not to, that’s self-determination. If you don’t have the choice then it isn’t.
somebody never leaving the place where they were born is not evidence for or against self-determination.
If anything it’s evidence there is absence of social mobility and opportunity in those areas.
No you’re right, it’s not sad a person doesn’t get to travel. I myself have never left New England, but I’ve been all over it. What’s sad is they don’t know other cultures or way of life, then become fearful of them, then hateful, and dismissive.
It’s a pathway to ignorance of you aren’t a learning seeking person. Those people in rhe class didn’t know our state had public transport, and actively thought it was fake, the video no longer resonated with them, as it didn’t represent them. That’s whats sad.
That’s just not reasonably possible in the U.S. If I wanted to go Orlando to Detroit on a train that averaged 100mph without stopping it would take 12-13 hours, not including the trips to and from the train stations boarding etc. To California you’d have to throw another 1,000 miles on to that, so an extra 10 hours. 26-44 hours of travel on a weekend trip sounds horrible. If I were going for a week, sure. (Also a train without stops is hypothetical, it would take longer even if the train could go 150mph)
150mph is pretty slow for a decent cross country high speed rail service. For example the Chinese HSR hits Max speeds of 240mph with the single longest bit of track covering just over 1800 miles so not only is it possible its already been done.
OP means It’s impossible for Americans because we’re just so dumb.
Emotionally dumb. Self gimped in ever way. It’s all quite performative of us to collectively fail to accomplish anything as a nation.
China’s high speed rail loses enormous amounts of money. Even when you consider the secondary and tertiary economic effects. Even the Chinese government has more or less given up on it.
All public transit doesn’t make money. Even the United States interstate system hasn’t made a single penny in profit.
Public transit shouldn’t need to make a profit. It’s cool if it does, but it inherently shouldn’t need to.
The benefits of making people travel for jobs and places to spend money generates more tax revenue and more money for businesses than if they were stuck at home otherwise.
Precisely this. “Hey you need to make money” is what’s effectively killed Amtrak, and it killed passenger rail in much of the US (what wasn’t torn up by highway building).
What do you mean given up? They’re still laying more rails and running more trains than ever. Even running dozens of trains a day, like 95% of the time the trains are fully booked, or it’s just soft sleepers and maybe standing available if you try to book the day of, or even a few days in advance for longer routes.
They said average speed. Those max speeds are only reachable along certain parts of the track, sometimes straight up unachievable between some stops. Mostly they travel well below their max speeds. I would not be surprised if the average speed is not that far from 150 for most of the lines they service, though I don’t have any numbers on hand.
So leave Saturday morning say 8, take a train at 9, get there around 9pm, get to your hotel by 10pm go to bed by 11pm get up at 6. Go have your breakfast meeting, leave for the train station around 8 to leave by 9am to get back by 9pm to get home, get ready for bed and go to work in the morning.
That is not a weekend trip to me. That’s a sitting in transportation for an entire weekend and not doing much of anything.
Sounds about the same as flying. Took 12 hrs to get from Cleveland OH to Venice FL. Took a redeye to Chicago, had a layover then took a flight from there to Sarasota FL. Left around 2AM and got in around 2PM.
Airplanes travel faster, but the whole system moves slower. Can’t say whether a train system would be better though…
Jeez not sure why that was so rough Today’s flights
Like why would anyone take that third flight with the stop? Just show up slightly later for cheaper… “I left 8 hours later and got their 20 mins later”. Airlines are crazy sometimes
The airlines are just showing your all the options. There’s a plane going to Denver and a plane leaving from Denver to your destination. The system is not doing anything to determine if that’s a good idea or not, it’s just showing you there are connected dots there. It’s not a planned itinerary that someone decided on.
Pre-covid, and peak season would be my guess. It was January 2020 that we went.
I usually like the demeaning flights if I have to fly, so I shoot for Spirit. And I try to keep to just a backpack if I can, a tiny suitcase I can carry on instead if I need dress clothes.
Last time I flew Nashville to Orlando I threw a couple items in a grocery bag and went with that. All my toiletries are usually in a small zip up bag.
Spirit is terrible, but when it’s $44 for the flight why not. I’m already going to get sexually harassed by TSA, I’m not really fretting the attendant running in circles wondering where the pilot is at.
Cross country doesn’t have to be coast to coast.
There ain’t shit in the middle except for Colorado.
I say this tongue in cheek, I definitely have a plan to fly my family to Denver to start an RV road trip, because I think the most beautiful places in the US are out in that no man’s land. The coasts are just the best parts.
High speed rail. Japan’s is 200mph.
Musk’s hyper loop was a scam but various others tests were 288 mph. Could go higher.
Japan is smaller than California, with several times the population density.
Reframe your thoughts as: taxpayers per mile of track. Then begin to understand.
Japan still runs trains to areas where there’s 1 village every 15-20 miles. Single track, that splits at the odd unmanned platform so people can board and trains can pass each other, and they have a train like every 10-15 minutes.
The USSR didn’t even bother with the platforms sometimes, just had a guy driving a locomotive by a bunch of villages every few hours, stopping any time he saw a farmer who had to take some cows to market or whatever.
Roads are expensive to build and maintain, cars are expensive to build and maintain. Every trip taken on a train or bike instead of a car saves the tax payers money.
Japan finds solutions, America finds excuses.
You have enough taxpayers to build 26 lane highways in California, but you’re telling me you don’t have enough money to build a 2 lane HSR?
Sorry, I’m not American. Looking at it from the outside. There are a lot of things America can do better.
But from a purely math perspective, it’s a good metric to explain why Japan has what it has.
They have it because they spent more money on rail and less on highways compared to the US. They chose the better infrastructure.
If you tax billionaires more you can pay for the high speed rail
Or healthcare. Or whatever else. Yes.
But you’ve already lost the war against the capital class and are left dreaming.
Sure thing bub
It’s not like everyone in the country needs to ride it daily. The US has plenty of people. You connect population centers. And if you can build on flat land rather than Japan’s mountains, you’re on easy mode. Really you’re the one that needs to reframe things.
It’s what the people want. There’s been several times where high speed rail in Florida was put on a public ballot, and overwhelmingly got voted for. And then the government came back and said, “wha…we didn’t think you’d want this? We don’t have the money.” The last I was involved in explored high speed from Miami through Orlando and the I-4 corridor to Tampa. Huge potential. “We’re a poor state, can’t do it.” FU FL
The non Disney parks keep lobbying against it because it would either destroy their foot traffic relative to Disney or need too many stops that it’s no longer high speed rail
I don’t think they literally meant journeys from one end of the country to the other, but rather travelling distances of 100-500 km. Maybe even up to 1000 km would be preferable by rail, especially with night trains.
I do agree that if you for some reason specifically want to travel from Orlando to Detroit, plane is by far the superior option. But Orlando to Miami? Or Orlando to Atlanta? High speed rail would be perfect.
The train from to Miami has been quoted and attempted over and over since I was about 7 growing up in the greater Orlando area. 28 years later and it’s still in talks. They tried to connect Tampa to Daytona through Orlando. (All they needed to do was follow I4 as the road already goes there.). This is as far as that has gotten: (15 years on that alone)
Yeah, and the problem isn’t the trains, it’s the politics, and ultimately the voters.
The train would make things better, and we could build it, but the will to do so isn’t there.
no one wants to be unfairly compensated for the land the government takes from them, the us just has laws that allow the landowners to turn it into a lengthy court battle
The “cross country in a weekend” is a bit of an exaggeration but Detroit to Chicago, Detroit to Minneapolis, Detroit to New York City should be perfectly reasonable for a weekend trip if trains went at a reasonable high speed.
There’s zero reason for train to be slower than automobile.
Was curious about the lake on that last one, ouch. That one might be hard with any speed rail. Chicago Detroit should be easy, Minneapolis a little harder but you could probably get it down to 6 hours each way
For New York, train goes via Toronto. It’s 16h by train vs 9.5h by car. 9 hours is right at the limit of what I would consider not-insane for a weekend trip (19h travel for 38h visit gives 2:1 ratio of visit:travel time).
If you had a sleeper car it’d work alright. Obviously leaving Friday night would make it much nicer. Otherwise your always stuck with after dark Saturday night, and maybe a couple hours Sunday morning. But if you can get bottomless mimosas with breakfast and sleep during the 9 hours back it’d make you be able to leave in the afternoon Sunday.
Asian high speed rail says otherwise. Check out chinas glow up from 2008 to 2022
So about 14 hours each way plus traveling to the form the trainstation to your final destination. So I would assume ~30 hours of travel on a weekend. Nope, still rediculous. Also that’s a couple hundred miles shorter than Orlando to Denver. Cross country weekend trip just isn’t practical without taking a plane.
You’re trying to be right about trains. I’m trying to get sheltered people to see the world.
14 hours each way
The G75 says 11 HRs. These stations are in the center of town with walk on service (takes me north of an hour to get to any airport in the states, plus another hour through security).
The flight from Orlando to Denver is certainly faster at closer to 5 HR (plus airport travel), as its a direct flight overland. But it’s five hours in a tiny seat versus 11 hours in a sleeper car.
You’re also moving far fewer people - between 140 and 230 two to three times a day - compared to the thousands of people you can move on an active train line round the clock.
Cross country weekend trip just isn’t practical
On what planet is a five hour flight each way practical for a weekend getaway?
The airline solution reduced comfort, increased individual costs, drastically increased pollution, and still didn’t achieve the stated goal.
I never said the plane was practical for a weekend getaway either. My response was that this “I want trains so people can have cross country road trips on the weekend” just wasnt practical to the majority of cases. A lot of people are saying HSR would be good for interstate trips, and yes they would. Even next state over.
But right now it’s set up horrible so it is more expensive and takes longer for most even semi long trips. Like this
Cheapest and fastest route is to drive. Once you factor in everything it’ll take to get into an airport and out, and you have a vehicle while your there. So most Americans compare prices to that and say it’s better to just drive. It’d be nice if there was a 3 hour train that covered that for $50. Trips like that Id love
My response was that this “I want trains so people can have cross country road trips on the weekend” just wasnt practical
You deliberately selected a pair of destinations with one of the longest possible lines, then complained that said travel was “too long”.
But right now it’s set up horrible so it is more expensive and takes longer for most even semi long trips.
The US has a policy of de-prioritizing passenger rail in favor of commercial shipping. If you’re a lump of coal or a box of Amazon merch, you make the Orlando to Charleston run significantly faster.
Cheapest and fastest route is to drive.
This is a result of domestic policy, not material efficiency. You can make the Beijing to Shanghai route - 819 mi - in around 5.5 hrs, the same time it would take you to cover the 380 mi car ride from Orlando to Charleston. Twice as fast as an American bus over less than half the distance.
That’s because the state and municipal governments decided to build a major HSR artery between these two cities. A deliberate policy choice.
As another counterpoint, the Amtrak route from DC to NYC (238 mi) is a 3HR train ride that takes you straight into the center of Manhattan. The Lincoln Tunnel and the Washington Bridge alone can take north of an hour to get through on rush hour. Nevermind riding a car up from Virginia.
Why does DC/NYC have a high speed artery while Orland/Charleston not? It certainly isn’t because people don’t want to travel up and down the Atlantic Coast in large numbers, particularly during tourist season. But the “quality” of the passengers - working class schmucks, rather than Wall Street business goons and DC politicians - is significantly different.
That’s not how it works. HSR could be used to alleviate traffic in dense urban regions, without actual cross-country interconnectedness.
So-Cal, Nor-Cal AND something connecting the two with a couple of stops in between.
Salt Lake area.
Houston - Forth-Worth-Dallas - Austin triangle.
Florida.
Urban areas connecting the Great Lakes.
I won’t address the East Coast specifically, as it’s quite evident that it’d have needed something around the same time Japan, Europe or China made strides.
Just to do a quick jump over the border, various governments have been attempting to build a HSR in the Windsor - Quebec City corridor for decades, but the political will is simply not there, and we still have the worlds widest and highest traffic highway that costs a fortune to maintain instead (along with the catastrophe that is the 407ETR).
Meanwhile as the latest example, Italy built up a new HSR system by 2015, in an area that is comparable in size and density to Florida. It has a monthly pass system that even allows you to take your bike on every route. It’s also a national corporation. How come transit in NA is not allowed to be national, except when it comes to funding roads from tax payer money?
Come to Seoul~~~
I grew up with public transit, it was a nuisance when a bus went through every 15 minutes rather than 10.
I want a time machine to go back and yell at myself to appreciate it more, because ever since I left my hometown, I missed it.
I think this image would be improved without the unrelated first sentence about self-driving cars.
I don’t like cars, but I would prefer cars be built with seatbelts.
I don’t like cars, but I would prefer cars use renewable energy instead of gasoline.
I don’t like cars, but I would prefer they be built to sensible safety standards.
I don’t like cars, but I would prefer they could drive themselves reliably instead of requiring a fickle and inattentive human pilot.
Honestly, I want both. I live in Germany and my city has pretty decent public transit. But there are still way too many cars in the city, most streets have parking spaces on both sides, leaving only a small sidewalk. I want people to not be dependent on owning cars anymore. I want personal cars in the city to be replaced by self-driving cabs that you can just order when you need them. Imagine how cool that would be. There would be centralized (underground??) self-driving car storages and if you need a car, you just order one via an app and they just come to wherever you are autonomously and drive you wherever you want to go. You could basically get rid of all public parking spaces, it would be awesome.
The issue with the self-driving-cab concept, as a cure to car infrastructure, is it doesn’t really fix the problem. Sure, maybe parking becomes less of an issue, but not roads. If anything they are worse. Not only is it still one person per car (usually), it also now has to drive around empty to pick up new passengers. At least a personal car never occupies or damages road infrastructure when it isn’t in use.
Busses are a legitimate solution for shorter distance travel that reduce infrastructure requirements. You can fit potentially dozens of people in a single vehicle, and they can be made to get you almost anywhere you need, with only a short walk required.
I really like this idea! How would you get parasites to not use the self driving cabs in lieu of public transit? It’s a great idea for disabled folks and others who have a more difficult time using mass transit, but it seems like something rich people would monopolize.
Move to Italy
-
Dirt cheap cost of living
-
Housing prices like it’s 1999
-
Main line HSR that runs from Venice to Lyons and Milan to Reggio Calibre
Any idea on how hard it is to immigrate to Italy and what kind of job prospects there are? I think it’d be a cool place to live, but I honestly haven’t really considered it.
And boy does that HSR move. Used it to get from Rome to Naples a few years ago, and while being extremely comfortable it moved at around 320 km/h. I think it took like 1 hour to get to Napoli.
-
The tram in edinburgh scotland was awesome when I visited.
That’s not boring, that’s convenient.
Things that are convenient don’t necessarily excite you, they delight and comfort you.
