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Comment by taurath | Hacker News Reader

I'm sorry but the density argument doesn't cut it. It's 30-100x as expensive to build rail through dense areas as it would be through farmland like I5. Most of the in between places are crazily cheaper.

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It's not about cost. Long rails aren't that expensive. The problem is that a train running through Texas is useless unless you want to get to a specific city that the tracks actually pass through. Anywhere else could be hours of driving from the station and there isn't any infrastructure for that. A 4 hour cab/Uber ride is way too expensive.

Even a train that drops you off in the middle of Los Angeles could leave you many hours from the actual place in Los Angeles you want to be.

So basically the reason we don't bother with more HSR is because all of our large cities are unplanned sprawling messes and the rest of our transportation infrastructure is almost just as bad as our HSR.

LA is not such a great example anymore because metro/metrolink/flyaway + uber can take you anywhere you want to go from Union Station these days cheaply, sometimes quickly.

I wouldn't say cheaply or even that easily. If I have to get off a train (whatever that cost), catch a fly-away bus ($8 both ways), then get an uber ($50+ just to Burbank 12m away), it's going to be very expensive and very slow assuming the stars don't align perfectly.

> The problem is that a train running through Texas is useless unless you want to get to a specific city that the tracks actually pass through.

This argument ignores the new and existing population clusters that form and grow along a transportation link. You only have to look at interstate highway system and how new population clusters formed and existing clusters grew along the links once interstate hwy were built. Just reviewing the I-35, I-10 in Texas will show you that. Same can be seen with local subways and light rails systems. The clusters near stations grow faster than rest of the city.

We already have an antique low speed rail network that covers most of the US population centers. That makes it even cheaper to upgrade to high speed rail, since most of the land has been bought.

Also, when people in the US say "high speed rail", they usually seem to mean 180mph. That does not qualify as high speed rail overseas.

Upgrading the current low speed system to medium speed 180mph rail would mean that taking the train would actually be faster than driving (and for short air routes, faster than airport+flying).

My guess is that many existing routes would then become financially viable.

Unfortunately majority of existing rail lines and nearby lands are owned by freight rail companies. So repurposing them for HSR or passenger transport is an uphill battle. The areas where freight rail lines are shared with passenger traffic, freight gets priority making passenger trains unreliable, excessive delays and unattractive.

Many of the existing freight rail corridors are twisty and not designed in a way that works for high-speed rail at all (unless you buy land anyways to straighten out the more extreme curves) [1]. They might work for conventional passenger rail if you could get the freight railroads to play nice and do better maintenance on the tracks.

[1]: typical example -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_Curve_(Pennsylvania)

[2]: For a detailed example of what's possible & what isn't with existing corridors, you can look at this independent engineer's study of how to upgrade a rail route through Northern California: http://zierke.com/shasta_route/

Expense is only half of the problem. The other half is utility. There is virtually zero utility for building high-speed rail through the central US.

If US wants to revitalize mid-America, it has to build HSR through mid-America. The history of interstate highway system is good primer on it. Otherwise mid-America will empty out with time.

Shouldn't it? Why would anyone who isn't a farmer actually want to live there?

I disagree with you. Keeping mid-America populated is in long term interest of US. Mid-America is one of the most fertile landmass in the world. To farm this land, you need farmers and farm-hands. The farmers/farmhands need a support structure/community that is currently degrading as people move towards costs. Farmers are at the bottom of the totem pole in spouse selection and family formation. Nobody wants to move where farmers are and geographic area beyond reasonable driving distance inaccessible to farming communities. This leads to incest and inbreeding and all other ills that isolated communities experience. One solution, beyond farming automation, is to widen the geographical area accessible to farmers and their support structure. HSR can easily double or triple the distance covered currently by roads. HSR will bring distant communities in mid-America together.

People aren't moving out of the midwest because there aren't trains. They're moving out because there is no culture, limited natural recreation, etc. Trains aren't going to keep them there, and the low population density means the idea makes even less sense.

One event is rarely a driving force of change, it is always confluence of events that cause change. Lack of train is not root cause, it is a part of potential solutions to what ails the region. US would never had westward migration if population density was the driving force for movement. You want to populate an area, make it accessible and attractive.

> You want to populate an area, make it accessible and attractive.

You mean "start a gold rush".

Zero utility? Chicago, Minneapolis, Toronto, and Detroit are are among the most populated and most economically powerful cities in North America. Connecting them and other cities on and around the great lakes with high speed rail would provide massive economic opportunity.

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