Comment by pengaru | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pengaru | Hacker News Reader

Having ridden the California Zephyr between Chicago and Sacramento multiple times already this year I'm extremely annoyed with the lack of HSR in the USA.

Really looking forward to California getting some HSR established within the state.

Hopefully the rest of the country gets on board before I die.

It's really wonderful to travel cross-country by rail with your bicycle in tow. I made the trip from CA to IL for ~$160 in coach and was able to pedal literally out the doors of Union Station in downtown Chicago to the West burbs in day.

If it didn't take ~2.1 days to make the trip I'd do it far more often to visit friends/family. And we'd be able to meet somewhere in the middle like CO with our mountain bikes in tow on the regular. As-is the trip wastes far too much time in transit for them to meet me, and it's too costly/ridiculous emissions-wise for most of them to fly to CO (or CA) for a weekend - nevermind the nuisance of bringing a mtb on a plane.

Bringing the mtb onto the Zephyr was as easy as checking a bag, fully assembled, zero preparation necessary. It just needs to go 300+MPH and this would be magical.

There isn't many people in the USA that love the idea of driving their car to ride a train so that they can then rent a car to get where they are going.

Rails work very well in situations were you have high density living areas connected to high density working areas and everybody needs to get from the same point A to the same point B very often.

There is only a few places in the USA were such situations exist and they generally already have railways for people to use.

There was once a time were the USA had useful network of trains that people could actually use to get where they wanted to go, but the Federal government flushed that down the toilet in the first half of the 20th century in the name of "improving efficiency".

Pretty much every town, big or small, in the USA that was started before train going through the heart of it. If it didn't have a way to get there by rail there was no real point in building it.

But that hasn't been true for a long long time.

The idea being that large numbers of privately owned railways with small depots all over the place wasteful use of resources. It was much better to regulate and consolidate to remove the redundancies. They used to be proud about all the different depots and stops that were being destroyed and railway spurs that were being shutdown because they thought that it would reduce costs and economize the railway network.

The end result of all of this was the Interstate highway system.

Rail isn't going to come back.

> There isn't many people in the USA that love the idea of driving their car to ride a train so that they can then rent a car to get where they are going.

You've just described airports, except with trains instead of planes. If I could take a train instead of fly I would.

Even if it’s more expensive and twice and long I will take a train over flying. Flying is awful and trains and nice.

I wouldn’t. PTO is precious to me and planes are many times faster than trains.

HSR beats flying every time in medium-distances, which is where anyone is really pushing to build it.

Planes are technically faster once they get going, but the processes related to security, boarding, and the location of airports often being very far from city centres negates this for HSR train journeys <= 4 hours long. In theory you could replicate all the worst features of airports with rail, too, I suppose, but for obvious reasons it's easier to build a train station in a city centre than an airport.

> planes are many times faster than trains

California's HSR trainset requirements specify sustained 220MPH.

Your statement applies to the current dysmal US freight-prioritized train situation, not any respectable modern HSR implementation.

A modern HSR in the USA not shared with freight should have no trouble beating ~500MPH air travel door-to-door. It should emit less co2 and cost less to boot.

Plus good luck affording an entire room with a bed and private toilet on a plane, that's private jet amenities territory.

Observation and dining cars are also nice experience enhancers trains easily offer but planes can't afford the space for.

I share the same pipe dream. The Zephyr is a second class passenger service on old freight lines. They won’t be able to retrofit high speed rail on them, Amtrak spent enormous sums for the Acela and it only beats the Northeast Regional by 25 minutes between NYC and DC over a three and a half hour trip. The political gridlock to extend such a design across the Great Plains and through the Rockies pains me to imagine.

Last time I tried guessing the cost of a high speed rail line from Denver to Chicago it seemed fairly cheap because it's 1200 miles of flat and undeveloped land. I think probably $100 billion.

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