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Comment by revscat | Hacker News Reader

Won't happen. The political reality is that America is opposed to these things, and I'm not sure which party is more to blame.

Sorry, but it's true. These things come up over and over again, only to be killed root and branch by whatever means necessary.

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I disagree. King county voters just funded a $54 billion, 30+ year light rail and transit development plan last November[0]. I actually think this new rail plan has a great chance of happening.

Seattle, Bellevue, Redmond, and surrounding areas have a lot of enthusiasm for new transit. The traffic is getting outrageous, and people are genuinely interested in investing in alternatives to cars.

Heck, I take the light rail back from the airport nearly every time now. Plus, every time I drive to Portland I get trapped in Olympia traffic, and there's literally no highway to Vancouver proper. Fast, reliable rail would be a godsend!

[0]: http://soundtransit3.org/

The scope for Sound Transit 3 is too small, primarily due to our Legislature kneecapping Sound Transit's taxing authority, and sub-area equity forcing Sound Transit to not build high ridership lines like what was proposed along the 44's route (which would have been the 2nd highest ridership line in the region, after Ballard to Downtown).

The appetite is definitely there, we can't build or zone our way out of traffic, and short of Trump killing Microsoft and Amazon like he did Boeing recently (with the spate of canceled 777 contracts and all), the city will keep growing.

What did trump do to cancel 777 contracts? That thing was hurting on its own I thought.

So is Canada. We have zero high speed rail. In fact, many traveller rail lines have been closed over the years. Sadly.

Because Canada has many (more?) of the same geographical and distance/density issues that make most high-speed rail uninteresting in the US unless you ignore economics.

Canada has the benefit of most of the population almost lined up along the US border, at least the distance issues are only 1 dimensional.

There is a crossover point in distance where it is going to be quicker and cheaper to fly. Except for (Detroit-)Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal the distances are too great.

I don't know the distances in US/Canada, but I want to mention one thing because this annoys me in virtually every discussion here on HN:

How long the travel takes is not the only metric.

We have flights, trains (with different speeds/comfort) and busses in Germany between the same cities. And all of those modes are used! And it's not even a money issue, very often flights are cheaper than trains but still people take the train. :)

It's not black and white.

Yes, but the distances are really much bigger. And I'm a lover of trains and the gentle rattle of an overnight train.

- Toronto to Winnipeg -- 2300km via Chicago, Milwaukee; 20h by car non-stop. -- 2h30 by plane, plus 120 min check-in and TSA buggery

- Munich to Berlin -- 530km, 6h by ICE train -- 1h10 by plane, plus 60 min check-in

In Germany we're talking the difference between a pleasant afternoon reading a book and eating pastries, versus the hectic boarding and deplaning from an airport out of town. Consider instead:

- Dortmund to Moscow -- 2300km, 36h by train (ICE and whatever ancient rolling stock eastern Europe uses). -- 3h by plane.

Are you really going to take the train?

One thing you aren't mentioning about trains is they go from city centre to city centre. An airport is often half an hour or more to the city centre. Sometimes is's very awkward and expensive to get from the airport to the city.

I used to live in a little village in the UK. I could walk 200m from my house to the village train station, and from there I could be in the city centre of any city in the UK in a few hours, with the only changes being strolling from one platform to another a couple of times inside a nice train station.

I could have lunch on the train and then work at a big desk with a power socket and WiFi for the rest of the journey. No need for a taxi or bus or anything at either end. I'd be deposited right in the city centre ready for whatever I needed to do. There was almost zero impact on my day compared to being at my home desk. You can't say that about flying.

You are right (except for the fact that the Munich airport is 50 minutes from the city and one of Berlin's airports is too so your math is off there).

I think I was remembering the discussions about SF->LA or Boston->NY->Washington when writing my comment.

I can't edit my comment anymore, here's another thing I found: https://bauprojekte.deutschebahn.com/p/vde8

It says Munich<->Berlin will be around 4h in 2017 thanks to new high speed tracks. The "vde" is supposed to be a Germany unification traffic project. I can't believe this is only happening after 27 years of East+West :-)

Even on the Detroit-Toronto-Ottawa leg, which should be hugely profitable, Via manages to screw it up. Admittedly my experience is several years old, but I once took the train from Ottawa to London, Ontario. It took over 12 hours which I think was something like 5 hours late. Because all of the passengers to Detroit missed their connection, Via drove them by taxi from London. I asked the porter if this was common. He told me it happened on virtually every run.

I used to take the train everywhere that I could when I lived in Ottawa and the Hamilton-Montreal side was quite a bit better, but still ghastly. If Canada ever gets serious about rail, they need to do something about the rail infrastructure and the Via monopoly. Don't think it will ever happen though.

Its also really good that the train station in Ottawa is miles from anywhere. There is a public bus that wants exact change.

I think it's simply that America has a larger geographical scale relative Europe causing there to be a lower ROI...

That being said, I never have understood why we can't get support for a bullet train from San Francisco to Los Angeles.

But this is about a 140 miles / 225 km railway line, which is approximately the same scale as European high-speed trains.

It has little to do with geography and everything to do with the auto industry. They don't want to allow public transportation as government-sponsored way to reduce the profits of the auto industry.

What active work do the automotive companies do to discourage rail?

The light and high speed rail companies put on a very good dog and pony show to representatives. They shower them with money, explain the economic incentives and all sorts of other items. The government will then actively try to sell it to the tax base. Any person speaking out against it is called as a Luddite or sponsored by the oil industry (although these are contrived, as they are actually representatives of a economic think tank). The head winds for rail is always heavily supported by a directly benefiting industry. So, I am genuinely interested in your source for the automotive statement you made. Also, please do not use l up the unproven "conspiracy" from prior to world war 2.

Usually it comes in the form of telling blue-collar people that any threat to their business model is a threat to their jobs. It seems to be very effective.

In California, it's pretty clear it's Republicans to blame:

http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/02/17/feds-delay-caltrain-el...

It's not so clear cut. The Republicans may be trying to put breaks on the never ending money drain that this project was. FWIW Trump looks to be very pro-High speed rail in general [1] esp as he is going to be pushing through his proposed 1TB infrastructure overhaul.

https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2017/02/03/abe-says-japan-to-show-u...

I would be very surprised if that 1T infrastructure spending bill ever sees the light of day.

Firstly, the US has a massive budget deficit and with upcoming corporate tax cuts the question will be where the money is going to come from. Secondly, the US is approaching full employment at ~5%. Now sure there is significant underemployment but you have to wonder if (a) there is enough people to build out all this infrastructure and (b) if the states even have enough shovel ready projects. Because they sure didn't during the GFC when Obama was looking for an infrastructure stimulus.

The republicans just busted the budget when bush 2 was president, so I expect that to continue. I figure this won't happen because they had the liberal states. But the employment situation is interesting, because we have multiple different worlds in the US. the coastal tech and big city tech economies are mostly great. It's the in between places that trump supports that are doing terrible. Those places need jobs, and there aren't any.

Except job wise, most of those areas have recovered, albeit with service industry jobs replacing industrial, but those jobs as they return to the US are nearly fully automated.

If Trump can stop kicking Boeing and others in the teeth we might even retain those jobs in the industrial sector that have remained thus far. Trump blowing up contracts Boeing has with airlines overseas bodes poorly for that though.

I predict we'll see another bubble since Trump removed most of the financial restrictions put in place by Dodd-Frank, lining us up for another 2007 bubble collapse all over again. Go Trump!

You are arguing they had good reasons. But it still seems pretty clear that it's a partisan issue.

You can blame Republicans for opposing it and blame Democrats for treating it like a gravy train and inflating the price, route, and build time, and cutting the speed. We are ten years into the project, and have nothing to show for it. This is how mega projects like this are run, it's hard to blame people for opposing them. Republicans could have been made to look like fools for opposing it if it was on time and on budget, and had a reasonable route. The original promise was $50 tickets & 220 mph speeds!!

Republicans have no power whatsoever at the state level in California.

Is there a good source to learn more about this, and especially your polarized view? I have friends into this discussion, but never understood the exact details each side was fussing about.

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