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Comment by h1fra | Hacker News Reader

Looking at the speed of the trains is a bit depressing. USA had so much potential to built the best high-speed railway network...

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Most of the states are too big to be economical. I think the biggest disappointment with US rail is that it doesn't get enough trucks off the highway. There should be no reason for trucks to venture more than a couple hundred miles from the nearest rail terminal. Not only is it wasteful, but it's more dangerous having trucks driving across the entire country.

Even in the densest areas of the country (NYC metro area), it's abysmal by developed world.

I got caught in probably the 2nd worst traffic driving to/from my parents (70mi away) this weekend I've had in 20 years. And yet it was still about 30min faster, each way, than if I took Metro North.

Speed would be nice, but speed is not the problem. If the trains just ran on time, 50mph would be just fine. The problem with Amtrak is frequent multiple-hour delays that stack up. The schedule is totally unpredictable.

High-speed rail typically excels when it can get you somewhere in a few hours because you wouldn't want to hop on a plane for that. At 50 mph, that gets you…basically nowhere. If you're doing 200 then you can cross most states in that time.

For me it's also cost. I have family in the Boston area and often traveling from NYC on Amtrak is at least as expensive -- and usually more expensive -- than flying.

But I'd also love if we could go faster than 50mph. TGV in France, which launched 41 years ago, travel between 167mph and 198mph [1].

[1] https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/TGV

"On time" is a metric that is focused on heavily, but to me it's meaningless. The LIRR is "on time" via schedule padding; a 50 mile trip to Ronkonkoma takes 80 minutes on the fastest express train. With line speeds largely 80mph throughout the route, commuters are robbed of an hour every single day. But hey, at least the "on time performance" metric is at 99%. Easy to do when your average speed is 37mph on 80mph track.

The LIRR Today has a great article, that I cannot for the life of me find, where the author used train speed data between stations to figure out what speed "most trains" accomplished (so accounting for curves, station stops, etc.) and redid the schedules according to that data. Without padding, everyone that uses the LIRR would save hours a week in commuting.

Incidentally, the LIRR has been moving away from higher train speeds and better connections to reduce travel time in favor of arriving at terminals within 6 minutes of the scheduled time. Schedule padding, replacing 80mph switches with 60mph switches (for the Elmont work), and removing all scheduled connections at Jamaica. I think it's crazy and I'm glad I don't commute to the city from Long Island. The connections at Jamaica disappearing is the most sad to me; that station has a really unique setup where 3 trains arrive at once, and you can transfer through the middle train to get to the other two destinations. It used to work like clockwork, but obviously if the middle train is late, the OTP for 3 trains decreases. Since that's the metric they care about, and not "can I get from any city terminal to any destination easily", that's what gets optimized out. I don't think it's good. It's nice if the trains run on time, but I'd rather be 20 minutes late once a week than spend an extra 5 hours on the train every week. But, not what the agency values.

HSR only makes economic sense in the northeast. Everywhere else is too spread out for rail to compete with air travel. The most popular air route in the western US (SF-LA) isn’t worth making high speed rail between. The project is expected to cost over $30 billion. Assuming 100% of air passengers use rail (4 million per year), at $150 per ticket it would take 50 years to break even… and that assumes zero maintenance costs. Also it would be slower than taking a plane.

Requiring freedom of movement to operate for profit is such a needlessly self imposed limit. This would be a solved problem if our government truly operated for the good of the people instead of for Continuity Of Government. The Department of Defense budget was 1.52 Trillion for FY2023 alone while we're arguing over an order of magnitude smaller: https://www.usaspending.gov/agency/department-of-defense?fy=...

They already own most of the necessary land anyway: https://www.blm.gov/sites/default/files/docs/2023-07/BLM-Adm...

That’s what I noticed! An Amtrak train in the middle of nowhere Montana is going 49MPH…

The train situation in the USofA is depressing on so many more levels than just speed. Availability is even worse. I'm in Dallas, but to get to Denver, I have to go to Chicago first and involves a >2 hour bus ride along the way. WTF?

it already has something much more sophisticated - a high-speed air network

think your train is efficient? a plane can fly in a straight line between any two points in the US! beat that! ever see a train cross one of the great lakes? no challenge for a plane! rerouting a rail line can cost billions...but only a tiny bit of fuel to reroute a plane...not to mention I can go coast to coast in five hours on a plane but the world's fastest train would take much longer...

in the northeast I still prefer to take acela over being dehumanized by the TSA

TSA can screen people the same for rail, they just tend not to. Ideally we’d go back to pre-9/11 screening for everything.

High speed rail is most competitive with short and medium range air. Say you want to go from SF to LA. That’s a 90 minute flight. Plus a few hours of getting to and from the airports plus faffing around within the airports. Or it’s a 6 hour drive. Or, with a top-quality high-speed line it’d be a little under two hours on the train, handily beating any current option.

High speed rail wouldn’t be all that competitive for going coast to coast in the US, definitely.

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