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Comment by ehnto | Hacker News Reader

When "Sea Plane" seems like a good alternative to commuting between two metros you have to chuckle.

High speed passenger rail has so many benefits past commute time alone. It's fast and easy to get tickets, board and depart. It's consistent, predictable and you can reliably plan around travel times. Done well, you can be at the platform 5 minutes before you depart and be moving 5 minutes later. You can bring luggage with no fuss, just pop it in the overhead. They are generally well equipped, with full bathrooms.

It's nearly the speed of air travel, with none of the major downsides of air travel. I would happily take rail over planes and spend an extra hour underway than spend that extra hour dealing with airports either side of the flight.

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Japan's high-speed trains are very impressive, departing some stations on a 12-minute interval, going 275 km/h and stopping only occasionally. Kyoto to Tokyo is what, 3 hours and there are 4 stops iirc.

But the trains go in all directions and are back-stopped by many local trains including express trains with inter-city service as well.

By contrast, a single dual-track system with only cars or nothing as a back-stop is not going to be reliable enough. What happens when a few days of repairs are needed on tunnels or bridges?

The other issue is political: does anyone think that Washington State is going to spend $50 billion on a transportation system in Boeing's back yard that is not made of airplanes?

On maintenance, the rail companies work very hard to not interrupt the service, pulling off some incredible feats of planning and engineering in overnight operations. I think America is plagued a bit by the same issue we have in Australia, where we are frankly just not willing to solve hard problems if there is an available status quo. Also because long distance high speed rail is generally about replacing short distance air and long distance road travel those methods would still be options. But the reliability is still going to be higher than plane or road could ever offer.

> The other issue is political: does anyone think that Washington State is going to spend $50 billion on a transportation system in Boeing's back yard that is not made of airplanes?

The article addresses this, saying there is currently a unique political climate that is in support of rail projects. But I hear you, it will take some persistence.

> Done well, you can be at the platform 5 minutes before you depart and be moving 5 minutes later.

All it would take to change that would be one terrorist incident and we would have TSA lines at the train station. I sure wouldn't count on quick to board being a lasting feature.

You might be right, but I don't think it would be the right choice. There's a point where you trade off total security for usability. America is no stranger to trains and metros, yet the majority of those run without TSA like security.

I noted while in Japan, that they have no bins. If I'm not mistaken, they were removed due to a terror attack in the 90s. However, Japan train stations all have coin lockers. Now in NYC, you've got no coin lockers, due to a terrorist attack, but you do have bins. I don't believe either measure actually reduces the likelihood of a terror attack, it's just security theater.

And you can cut down on cleaning staff

But add significant amounts of litter.

At least in North America, people will just toss their trash on the ground if there isn't a garbage can available, but if there is a bin around they will make use of it. Might be able to chalk that up to cultural differences when discussing Japan, however.

The city of Portland did a study once where they removed trash cans in some parking garages and the amount of litter went down. The theory was that if there's trash on the ground (as there often is around trash cans, especially when they are full) people will throw more trash onto the pile. Get rid of the trash can and people will carry their trash out.

"in North America, people will just toss their trash on the ground if there isn't a garbage can available, but if there is a bin around they will make use of it."

Better than in the UK, where many people toss their rubbish on the ground if there isn't a bin available. If there is a bin available, they still toss it on the ground.

I'm not saying you're wrong, but I think it's pretty analogous to writing a test to cover that bug that happened in your app.

Sure, but the same is true with airplanes, and we have TSA for airplanes.

TSA for planes is political theater. TSA for any HSR would depend on incidents and political climate.

Needs more of this: [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z02zi1S8vZQ

(Total Recall X-ray scene)

NYC tried removing their trash cans in a few stations but people just threw their trash on the tracks, increasing the number of track fires.

My understanding is that after the sarin gas attack in Tokyo, people there are much less likely to eat or drink in the train system as almost everyone who died in that attack was consuming something. So there’s less trash in general over there.

The French thought about the bin problem and replaced them all with transparent plastic bags mounted on frames to support them and hold them open. The best of both worlds.

At the risk of being put on even more watchlists than the average person-

I wonder if it would be quite as easy to wreck similar havoc on a commuter rail as on an airplane. It seems that it is easier to induce catastrophic failure to a plane than it is to a train.

Interestingly, there have been attempts[1], specifically in North America, with no major addition of security checks to train boarding. I suppose it would take a full scale, 9/11 style event to induce the same sort of worry about travel. I'd say that trains have a pretty good safeguard built in: they're stuck on tracks. That makes them significantly harder to ram into buildings, by my reckoning.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_Via_Rail_Canada_terrorism...

It would be harder to ram a train into a building, of course, but a derailment of a high speed train full of passengers would be a plenty bad enough incident to create a perceived need for TSA-style person and baggage screening.

What happens when a fast train hits a moose or other large animal? Is the mass difference so huge that it's effectively like a car running over a squirrel?

Most countries solve that issue by separating the high speed rail lines from the land much better than you would bother with low speed rail. A mind boggling amount of infrastructure goes into separating the Shinkansen from the rest of the world. Hundreds of kilometers of it is raised up on bridges, the rest is inside tunnels or strongly fenced off by wire fences or concrete walls. No level crossings either.

I imagine part of the design of the front of the trains is also to minimize damage by deflecting impacts. Although I think the major design drive for their long noses is entering and exiting tunnels without creating sonic booms and air pressure issues for passengers.

Adding security checks to train boarding is very costly because most trains stop at a dozen or more stations, oftentimes open air platforms without any real infrastructure or place to do security.

I think that’s the main thing that has protected them from TSA nonsense so far. The TSA does occasionally do baggage screening on train passengers at large stations but it’s rare and mainly to flex their power I think.

US CBP officers pre-clear travelers in Vancouver on the existing Amtrak route; however, the train is stopped anyway just across the border to give those agents a reason to exist as well. The existing Amtrak experience is terribly slow - like five hours from Vancouver to Seattle.

A high speed rail service would conceivably use pre-clearing as well.

It's worth mentioning that this exists in Beijing down to the subway station level. Every station (at least the ones I passed through) had a security booth with an xray machine. It felt distinctly dystopian, but it was a fairly quick affair - bag in, bag out.

International rail from the UK to the Schengen area also requires an airport style security check, though it's much more laid back.

The government can’t afford it because it can’t afford basic healthcare or social-security. Trains are great but not financially viable, so the money comes from somewhere else. Trains are not worth turning our backs on the poor, the old and the sick.

Trains benefit the poor a lot more than a road ever could. Trains enable cheaper mobility, opening up way more job opportunities and access to services in the process.

The article alludes to the enterprise being state/private partnership anyway, the federal government doesn't need to pay for it. Many high speed rail systems are public/private partnerships.

The rail network in the article is proposed at 50billion. There are individuals worth more than the US. The US spent 55 billion developing a single fighter jet platform, and that was just the R&D. If the US needs to cut from anywhere, it's definitely not infrastructure initiatives that should be cut. Infrastructure creates jobs, and increases economic opportunities for everyone.

I’m going off what I know about Amtrak, the California high speed rail project and local municipal transportation. It’s all a waste; not enough ridership to stay profitable, massive and unpredictable costs (California high speed rail is a great example) and ultimately not able to move the needle at all in terms of environmental concerns. These are feel good efforts, vanity driven or genuine expressions of a vision for the future which naively and irresponsibly refuse the accept the truth about ridership and costs that any competent political decision maker knows to be the sad truth.

We can afford those things perfectly well—we just choose not to.

Prove it. Start with California’s attempt to build high speed rail. That’s a case where we explicitly didn’t “choose not to.” We went all in and spent money that could have gone to poor children, the homeless and healthcare and gave it to business men who said what you say, “we can afford this and should.” Boondoggles hurt the poor and needy and redistribute money to well paid consultants, lawyers and developers. And the environmental impact of “green” rail projects is actually worse than not taking them on in the first place.

> And the environmental impact of “green” rail projects is actually worse than not taking them on in the first place.

While that's true, these propositions should be getting brought up to solve a particular commuting problem. In this case it's the highway between the three cities being clogged and slow. If not rail, then how do you solve the existing problem of car commuting not working in these areas?

I understand you see California's attempt resulting in low ridership as a failure of the rail system, but rail is a long term commitment to solve the commuting problem. Car commutes won't go away, and eventually they'll get so bad people will need, not want, a replacement service. If trains can be that service instead of planes, then that's a long term win environmentally (and I would argue as a community, getting out of cars is a net benefit for all kinds of metrics).

Perhaps the idea of commuting long distance for work in the first place is the real issue. But our communities have forgotten how to be local centric I think, especially in the more sprawling suburbias and car clogged metros.

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