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Comment by geogra4 | Hacker News Reader

I wonder who the first president to ride a Chinese bullet train will be and say we need one of those in the US?

Or any bullet train for that matter... The French and Japanese have had a friendly rivalry for decades. But both like the Chinese are willing to dedicate right of way for high speed trains. The American system's shared lines for passenger and freight traffic creates limitations the other systems do not share.

Switzerland has shared lines, but the freight traffic is required to be able to go at the same speed as the passenger trains. They have shorter trains with more engines than you'd see in the US as a result.

The passenger trains are really fast so its not really a compromise there

Right, that's the point - a dual system can be made entirely workable. You just can't let the freight railroads set the rules like they have here in the US.

I don't know if it's just where I happen to see them (near inhabited areas), but US freight trains seem to literally move at walking pace. Ringing the bell the entire time while they do it.

They can get up to 50-60mph but only outside of built up areas with long straight track (e.g. in the Great Planes). They mostly go slow for fuel efficiency (it takes a lot of power and distance to build up speed).

Here's one going 70mph in Texas: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMhSRP7RBpo

Switzerland is also tiny, making travel time less of a concern.

The UK system also has shared lines, but prioritize passengers and has a severe capacity problem.

No way not going to happen. The only way this will happen is if 1) they find a way to make high speed work on the NA railway gauges and 2) you convince the cargo companies to make passenger a priority.

1) seems like an engineering problem and 2) seems like a pipe dream.

Option 3) would be build dedicated high speed lines. Unless you’re a developing nation it sounds way too expensive. Especially a rail system as big as NA (US, Canada and Mexico are connected, maybe others in Central America).

Never underestimate the ability of some President to waste tens of millions of dollars reaching the same conclusion after doing exactly what OP suggested.

That's hardly even the cost of the exploratory committee, let alone the initial train ride. . .

Maybe some Boring Billionaire can come up with a few new ideas and change our perspective.

The California High Speed Rail project failed miserably, and cost the taxpayers $12.4 billion[1] to go from Bakersfield to Merced or about 160 miles (two cities nobody commutes from...but I digress).

At it's cancellation point, it was estimated to cost over $98.1 billion for a Los Angeles to San Francisco route - but we should note the cost estimates were going up $10+ billion every year they were re-estimated. The entire thing was supposed to "only" cost around $30 billion when introduced.

To make a High Speed Rail line that covers the entire United States... you're looking at hundreds of billions, up into the trillions of dollars... if not more.

At these cost rates, it's well over $200 billion for a straight line between San Francisco and New York City... but of course it won't be a straight line and it'll need to go to more places than those two cities in order to attract any sort of reasonable ridershare.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_High-Speed_Rail

The US is too big to make crossing it by train (even high speed) plausible when airplanes are a thing. High speed trains proved successful in medium distances. It sounds reasonable for California (LA-SF) and for east coast cities (New York-Washington), but covering the entire US is really not very useful.

However, I'm pretty sure that a large part of the costs of the California rail are related to private land, which probably isn't an issue through the majority of the route.

It took me a while to realize it, but one thing I like about Europe is that the financial centers and economically relevant places are centrally located

Compared to US where you have commute across the entire continent to leverage the largest pools and networks

This would be similar to commuting from Portugal to Estonia and thats not a thing.

And China is even bigger, yet they never tried any sort of excuses.

When you factor in check in, security, getting to and from the airport which often isn’t near the city, etc, high speed rail is way better. Drop in 10 minutes before you need to leave and the stations are right in the middle of town. For distances under a thousand miles, rail can easily be faster.

That is, until more Americans start riding rail and TSA gets involved and now it's exactly like an airport...

One way to interpret these facts is at face value - that 98 billion was how much the route would actually cost.

I argue otherwise - cronyism and a whole lot of contractor bullshit continually inflated the cost as everyone tried to stick their hand into the infinite jam jar of taxpayer's money, until suddenly the whole thing broke apart and now nobody's getting paid.

One day I'll sit down and actually research this theory of mine - right now I'm only working off my experience with contractors in large construction projects (oil and gas) in the past. Their mentality - if it's tax funded, the amount of money you can get from it is limited only by your ability to bullshit.

I think this has a large part to do with it too - however, that won't be any different with a national rail line... in fact, I'd wager it would be much, much worse.

Whilst I understand where you are coming from, the statement "Unless you’re a developing nation it sounds way too expensive" is a bit crazy.

Yes many countries without a legacy rail system are getting to hop straight to high speed. But that doesn't mean its not worth investing in for countries that already have a system. Doesn't mean it always is either of course.

For 1), isn't most high speed rail in the world standard gauge (1.435 meter width)? That's also what most of North America uses, though existing tracks are probably not up to spec for high speed in other regards, such as 'smoothness', or turn radius and banking.

I'm not sure about the width but French TGV trains roll on standard lines in the city.

0) Getting the right-of-way to straighten our existing rail lines anywhere useful is politically and financially impossible.

Also, too, not stopping at every podunk town and city. I take a train ~80 miles in New York each day, and the difference between the 90 minute train ride and the 135 minute train ride is how many stops they make along the way. Getting the political will to make a train go from Boston to DC and not stop at most of the cities in between -- especially after you seize a lot of very expensive land in those cities to build your nice, straight tracks -- is a tall order.

Isn't it possible to build some sidings for these smaller stops and have different lines (express/local) running along the same set of long rails, provided they join into the main line at the proper speed?

Is there a great unmet need to travel across the US on a 15+ hour train? We have airplanes and most people that need to travel across the country can afford a Southwest Airlines ticket to do so. The US also has 700 million people fewer than China, so there is less need for a China-style train system since air capacity handles the current needs just fine. Also, it’s highly doubtful than a long range train ticket would ever be cost effective. If people really want to cross the country on the cheap, buses exist. Trains also have the disadvantage of being inflexible. As populations shift, it’s much easier adjust air capacity to fit demand. While trains can only go where there are tracks. Airplanes are also safer than trains.

https://www.bustle.com/articles/83287-are-trains-safer-than-...

Aren't planes horrible for climate when compared to other systems?

Bullet trains have been around since the 60s in Japan, surely some USA president has ridden one on a trip there.

In terms of long distance travel can bullet trains compare with flights, especially if they shave time off with an easier check in system?

counter-intuitively, bullet trains offer a great alternative that airlines cannot: travelling from SF to NY in about 10-12 hours. 8 hours to sleep on a flat bed, and an hour or two for dinner and breakfast on either end.

This would be far superior to the 5-hour red eye flights.

Most bullet trains run around ~250-300 km/h - it'd take ~15-17 hours to go from NYC to SF/LA on a bullet train.

That's 8 hours of sleeping, two hours eating, and 5-7 hours wondering if the speed of an airplane outweighs the discomfort.

fair point - not sure why you are being downvoted.

Lets say SF to Chicago, then? Its about 2000 miles.

I was trying to illustrate a more general point that speed isn't necessarily the best or most optimal criteria even for long distances. My choice of example could have been better.

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