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melling

No mention of China. They built 16,000 miles of high-speed rail in 15 years. They’ll be at 24,000 miles by 2025.

The low/medium speed maglevs also seem interesting:

https://gbtimes.com/china-tests-new-generation-of-maglev-tra...

A 70-100 mph maglev would be useful in a few large cities.

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I'd take a 100mph maglev to LA from San Francisco if it meant faster than airport boarding, on-time departure and arrival, and a seat where I can put my legs up for the same price or less than a flight.

Does it have to be maglev? Does it have to be that slow?

Modern trains with wheels on rails are typically between 200 and 300 km/h: https://www.eesi.org/papers/view/fact-sheet-high-speed-rail-...

*edit: replaced old link with a better one.

Parent commenter said, "maglev", so I stayed on that train of thought.

Pun intended?

The high-speed maglev goes close to 300 mph. The low-speed is cheaper to run.

I doubt if you’d want to build a low-speed maglev between cities that are 400 miles apart.

Which was exactly my experience with the international trains in Europe. It was almost discombobulating, walking in the front door of the station, to the platform, and onto the train in about five minutes.

China has more high speed rail than the rest of the world combined: https://geoshen.com/posts/10-longest-high-speed-rail-systems...

I think it's relevant to mention [1] and [2]. A lot of things can get done if you aren't constrained by economic and political considerations.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19549466

[2] https://www.ft.com/content/ca28f58a-955d-11e8-b747-fb1e803ee...

Everyone is constrained by economic considerations. It's not like China has unlimited money. They are just choosing sectors and making bets on what to prioritize and what to ignore, same as everyone else.

You're right, but it's still relevant to note whether something is successful on its own accord, or whether it's being propped up by the government. If something can't be profitably done in a country as dense as China, there's no hope of it ever working in the US. At that point you might as well go with planes and spend the savings on carbon sequestration methods instead.

Rail is publically funded pretty much everywhere (i.e. it doesn't make a direct profit if you factor in infrastruture costs). Just because the market won't pay for it doesn't mean that it isn't worthwhile.

>Rail is publically funded pretty much everywhere (i.e. it doesn't make a direct profit if you factor in infrastruture costs).

You could argue that there are positive externalities to building high speed rail that make the public funding worth it. For commuter trains it's reduced congestion and cheaper housing (allowing people to move to the suburbs). Thus a train service can operate at a loss while still making money at a societal level.

What purpose does high speed rail serve that isn't mostly covered by planes?

For really long distances across sparsely populated areas like parts of the US, it probably doesn't make much sense.

I think thw biggest win would be in cities. People wouldn't need to take cars everywhere, so you build things more densely, etc.

Planes only make one stop at the final destination.

The high-speed train between New York and Boston could make two or three stops, for example.

I think 9 million people travel between San Francisco and Los Angeles every year. Wouldn’t that be best served by trains?

As the US grows from 350,000,000 to 450,000,000 people, should we add a few more trains every day, or a few dozen airplanes?

The big problem with planes is that an hour long trip takes three hours. 1 hour to enter the airport, 1 hour to fly, 1 hour to exit the airport.

Sometimes you can drive somewhere faster than you can fly there, entirely because of all the setup and teardown implied by a flight. It’s this intermediate distance travel where high speed rail really shines.

Anything can be said to be “worthwhile,” a political rather than an economic characterization commonly followed by handwavy appeals to unidentified stakeholders, intangible dividends, and vague but supposedly urgent need.

If customers are unwilling to pay the asking price for an offering, the value proposition is off. Perhaps the model is bad, the price too expensive, or the terms old-fashioned. “The market” is individuals seeking mutually beneficial trades: greedy capitalists and greedy consumers. If the trades aren’t happening, the necessary mutual benefit is not present. Forcing people to render services or accept services for terms they wouldn’t voluntarily agree to is not freedom.

Yes, voluntary persuasion is hard work.

> If the trades aren’t happening, the necessary mutual benefit is not present.

Then why does the US governement fund roads? Because there's a collective bargaining / coordination problem. It benefits us overall if we have them, but that doesn't mean that a profit could be usefully generated from maintaining them, or that this is the best way of running the system (we want to maximise use of the infrastructure, not discourage use with high usage tariffs).

The is fundamentally an economic argument, albeit one that recognises value beyond monetary value.

Japanese rail is almost all privately owned and operated, to the best of my knowledge. It makes its profits off of capturing the increase in land value by being the landlord around its rail stations. That model is illegal in the US so rail has to be subsidised.

That is also how the trans-continental railroad in America was financed.

Most public infrastructure is not profitable. This isn’t something special about rail. That is what taxes are for.

For one thing, China can just take the land.

Second, China's population density is not high compared to inhabited parts of the U.S. Eg. even though most of California is uninhabitable, it has 50% higher population density.

> China can just take the land.

I'll file that under "being propped up by the government"

> China's population density is not high compared to inhabited parts of the U.S.

I have no doubt that there are profitable HSR lines in china, just like there are in europe. The question is whether we would still get an "impressive" number if we cull all the non-profitable ones (the one stretching to xinjiang come to mind).

I mean, roads are propped up by the government and clearly not profitable

In the early days of the U.S., privately funded roads run for profit definitely existed. There are government-run toll highways that make money in excess of their maintenance costs, which suggests it should still be possible, if the government didn't already have the prime routes.

At any rate, the interstate highway system was a project to make the transportation network more robust for the purposes of national defense, inspired by the German autobahn. Centrally planned solutions to make the U.S. more like Europe won't always have the expected consequences.

For what it's worth, the Interstate Highway System and connecting roadways also receive special financial and political consideration, often and infamously to the detriment of working class/politically-disadvantaged middle class (and often minority) communities.

At the time, the alternative to the interstate were local roads which took 2-3x longer[1] (and probably at least 2x more expensive factoring in time, gas, and lodging), or commercial aviation which was crazy expensive[2]. What's the alternative to HSR? Planes which are in the same ballpark in terms of speeed and cost.

[1] https://www.thrillist.com/travel/nation/how-did-people-drive...

[2] https://www.travelandleisure.com/airlines-airports/history-o...

Japan’s first high-speed rail went operational in 1964. I imagine if the US soon followed in half a dozen cities, rail would be looked upon quite differently today.

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