> And rail is incredibly more efficient, you need very little space to transport a gigantic amount of people.
Assuming everyone is going the same place at the same time.
Assuming everyone is going the same place at the same time.
The train stations should be connected by walking, biking, trams (basically trains), subways (also trains) and buses. And car dropoff too. Maybe some parking.
Hirarchy, that how you create an efficent system from anywhere to anywhere. Fast intercity trains, regional trains, S-Bahn, Trams and so on.
It works great an I assure you not everybody works in the same place, and somehow trains are still very well used.
Today on my day off into the mountains Im gone take an trolly bus, then an electric regional train and then a disel bus into the mointains. With lots of stuff I have to carry. Its perfectly fine.
At anytime I can check an app, tell it where I want to go and I almost certainly have reasonable connection within the next 15 min.
So maybe instead of snark, you could actually learn something about tansportation engineering.
If you want to see what single rail corridor can do in a city, check out Münich S-Bahn for example. And then do the math on how large a highway would have to be.
Tomorrow I have a flight at 12:00. If I want to get there (~200km) with a car it's 2-3 hours depending on traffic. If I want to get there with train+bus it's 5h11m minimum, if I go right now it's 8h26m, if I want to catch my flight tomorrow it's 9h10m (and I'll be there at 8:40 instead of 11:00). It's also more expensive than driving there and leaving my car at one of the airport's parking lots for a week. I'll save ~50 euros by driving and set off at 8 tomorrow instead of 23:30 today.
Its of course also the case that the Western world after WW2 fully embraced the car and made sure its the most efficent while basically making sure street space was cleared of anything else. Before that street space was full of different uses.
Its only more expensive if you assume you already have a car, and a garage and so on.
And for a society, every single study shows that overall for society, private car travel is the most costly and the worst for the envoirment. You arent actually paying for all those costs.
From where I live airport is 1h by car and 1h 10min by train. Combined with parking and everything you will likely be faster with the train.
Yes, I’m aware of this. And if you have enough population density, which most of Europe does, you can have frequent train service because enough people will have overlapping trips at the same time that they can share a rail line.
The advantage of a highway network is that a single vehicle can simply take the fastest route from point to point all by itself even if relatively few people are traveling that route. Germany is about the same land area as Montana or New Mexico. Those states have populations of about 1 and 2 million, respectively. Germany has 84 million. Texas has twice the land area of Germany and a population of 30 million. So yeah, if you’re going just about anywhere in Germany there are probably enough people going the same way at about the same time to make a train a reasonable solution. That’s not going to be true in the United States. And even Germany has the Autobahn, which was decades ahead of the American highway network in sophistication.
> At anytime I can check an app, tell it where I want to go and I almost certainly have reasonable connection within the next 15 min.
I live within a 15 minute drive of just about everywhere I need to go on a regular basis. Why would I wait that long for the train when I could just be there already?
> If you want to see what single rail corridor can do in a city, check out Münich S-Bahn for example.
I’ve ridden the Munich S-Bahn, it was great!
High speed roads should be limited to rural area and no more than two lane, one for each direction.
Because no freight moves by road, only people. And even those people mostly shouldn't.
That is, your "should" doesn't actually work in the actual world. Trucks carry something like 60% of the freight in the US. You could say that rail should carry more of it, and that works for longer distance, but regional traffic is usually more efficiently handled by truck. So unless your vision of the future is people living in their cities, with nothing in their apartments, and not eating, you need better roads than that.
And then, you run into human nature. Some of us like going places, and more of us want to do so than you seem to like. Your "should" becomes "you should live your life the way I want you to, not the way you want to". You should expect a rather hostile response for that...
I didn't say we should get rid of roads, I said that high speed road should be limited to 2 lanes...in rural area, exactly the area that don't need high capacity roads.
You're trying to get to the world that you want (aren't we all?), but you're not starting with the world as it is, but with a world that exists in your head. As a result, your "solution" is completely unworkable in reality.
What about Interstate 80 that makes it special? Is it about freight carrying capacity? Can that be substituted by trains? Why does it have to be in that particular way?
You can say that a solution is 'unworkable', but you haven't explained your model of the world state well enough to convince someone. You haven't explained even "human nature".
Is my proposed "solution" politically unworkable? Yes, based on prevailing political opinions, society mores, cultural expectation and preferences. But perhaps you mean something else.
The traffic is there. It's not going to fit on one lane each way. What are you going to do with it?
Try to fit it on railroads? Can you show that railroads can realistically handle 250% of current freight traffic, and 100000% of current passenger traffic? My gut feel is that they can't. If you have evidence that they can, then let's see it.
Or are you just going to tell the traffic to go away? Tell people to buy less stuff, so that less freight moves? Tell people to not go places, so that there's less passenger traffic on roads? The answer to that is going to be middle fingers from a huge number of people.
This is pretty much the stated aim of my local council in London - they have a target to reduce car journeys by x% by 2030 or so. They want to achieve this by basically increasing journey times by adding congestion, removing lanes etc.
I find it incredibly dystopian.
"Reducing car use and increasing cycling levels will help address many of the challenges we face, including the climate crisis, air pollution, health and inactivity, road danger, congested roads, and fairer access to amenities, jobs and services. It will enable children to travel independently, create more pleasant streets and strengthen the economic recovery of our town centres and high streets. As we emerge from the pandemic, cycling, walking, wheeling* and public transport will help us achieve the goals that will ensure London’s success."
"The UK must significantly reduce its carbon emissions to meet its legally binding goal of reaching net zero carbon emissions by 2050 and avoid the worst effects of climate change. The Mayor has set an ambitious goal for London to become carbon neutral by 2030. Transport is responsible for more than a quarter of London’s carbon emissions, although this proportion is increasing as other sectors decarbonise more quickly The electrification of London’s buses, now the greenest fleet in Europe, and the rollout of charging points will help reduce emissions, but this will not be enough. Even if all new vehicles are electric by 2030, transport emissions are still likely to exceed what is needed to limit global warming by 1.5°C without substantial traffic reduction. Swapping private cars for sustainable modes is therefore essential."
I don't know where you got your percentages from, but here's a graph of passenger capacity across different modes of transport: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1c/Passenge...
By the way, wanna see something embarrassing? https://youtu.be/T3LLgzO_PrI?t=234. Japan had 100% safe, 100% punctual, high speed and throughput trains figured out in 1964.
"Over the Shinkansen's 50-plus year history, carrying over 10 billion passengers, there have been no passenger fatalities due to train accidents such as derailments or collisions, despite frequent earthquakes and typhoons."
Like I said, embarrassing.
Looking at states is stupid, because 'states' don't limit where people live.
If you look at regions where people live, the US is brilliant for trains and high speed trains.
The system that has barley seen any investment for 100+ years and is disadvantaged by every possible regulatory and legal mechanism can't currently do it, therefore it is unworkable.
Of course if you don't invest in a capability your not gone have it. The highway system has seen an absurd amount of investment and thus is currently handling these things.
Nobody claims that you can't change it tomorrow. But the question is what is possible if you do things like proper land use and transportation planning.
And we have very good evidence that highways are inefficient and unhealthy.
Interestingly, the US carries a higher proportion of freight by rail than Europe does.
Because the US has basically no passengers on the rails, its of course far easier to get things on the rails. Given that the US basically doesn't have passenger, the number are not that great.
Plus, Europe has ocean on 3 sides and generally a much longer coastline so lots of stuff that in the US uses rail, in Europe simply uses water transport.
In general a lot more things simply use local resources, for historical and political reasons.
Switzerland for example matches the US in terms of cargo modal share. But if you look what we had to do to achieve this high % while still having very large passenger numbers its incredibly hard. Basically it requires a concerted effort by government to prevent road use and to have a concert policy of all government and private institutions working together to enable it.
If you compare the US freight system to a actual peer competitor, the Soviet Union, the US doesn't look that great:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/54/RailUSAv...
If the US actually had a concert policy of increasing modal share of rail compared to road freight transport, the US could do so, so much more. It would be a great thing for the environment and everybody in the US.
The advantages of road networks as efficient means of point-to-point transportation disappear very quickly as the rate of non-point-to-point trips increases. Static routes like commuting and grocery shopping account for most traffic and are incredibly wasteful. You aren't stuck in traffic because of bespoke trips that necessitate a car, you're stuck because people make the exact same trip from A to B and back every single day.
If you are in a low density place you don't need high frequency to have a useful system.
I used to live in a place that had only villages of a few 1000 people with lots of farmers around. Having a 1hly small rural train is perfectly useful and a great thing to have.
And you only basically need a single rail line with a few crossing places to provide that kind of frequency.
The idea that trains are only useful in a super dense place is just one of those myths the US population has been brainwashed into.
> The advantage of a highway network is that a single vehicle can simply take the fastest route from point to point all by itself even if relatively few people are traveling that route.
Wrong. Highways has intersections that are spaced out. Each intersection requires a huge amount of cost to set up.
Highway intersections also take up a gigantic amount of space and are horrible places for humanity.
Train stops and intersection on the other hand can be small and efficient. They are often beautiful places and you can even have shops and development there.
New towns pop up on important rail intersections and stations, but not near highway intersections.
> Germany is about the same land area as Montana or New Mexico. Those states have populations of about 1 and 2 million, respectively. Germany has 84 million. Texas has twice the land area of Germany and a population of 30 million.
Now you are just making ridiculous arguments. I can't actually believe that you are making those arguments in good faith. But I am going are as if you were in good faith.
Nobody is making the argument that Montana or New Mexico should have a train system like Germany. Literally nobody. But they also don't even need full highway either. Normal roads of maximum 1-2 per direction and normal intersections should be perfectly enough for that kind of density. You can then still have excellent public transport with buses for much of the state.
But even in a place like Montana trains still make sense. There are still town like Billings or Bozeman and friends that are easily large enough for a train. Maybe not a high speed train. Where I live having a single village of 1000 people not be connected by regular trains is considered strange. Billings is significantly larger then the largest regional city here and that city has an S-Bahn system with multiple lines of 15-min interval trains.
So while Montana as a whole doesn't need a huge system, each town still can use trains and trams in a number of ways.
That said, and the reason why I think you are arguing in bad faith, is that if you actually look at a density map of the US. You comparison fall completely on its face.
The reality is, the US actually has very nice locations for trains. You brought up Texas. Yeah Eastern Texas is mostly empty, but Western Texas isn't. So instead of just taking arbitrary political boarders, you need to actually look at the regions where people actually live.
https://ecpmlangues.unistra.fr/civilization/geography/map-us...
And when you actually do that, you realize that the US has a number of urban mega clusters that are actually perfectly placed for trains.
Basically, Bay Area, Southern California, Great Lakes, Texas Triangle, Northeast Coast, Florida. Are the most important ones, there are few other depending on how you look at it. If you do your density analysis based on those actual regions were people actually live, you will see that your 'density' argument falls flat on its face. And those regions actually mater, not arbitrary state borders.
For example, the very successful train line from Paris to Lyon. Turns out that Dallas to Houston is actually about the same distance. Oklahoma City, Dallas/Fort Worth, Austin, San Antonio and Houston have plenty of population and are in optimal distance for a rail network.
The Great Lakes region has more population THEN LITERALLY ALL OF FRANCE and isn't much bigger. Arguable its actually better for rail then France is.
So please for the love of god spare me the 'its all about density argument'.
Basically 80% of US population will live in such a urban region soon. So your argument is simply wrong. Local density does matter for ridership and things like that, but that is very much a DELIBERATE DESIGN and has NOTHING to do with overall density of a the US or individual states.
This is a video that goes threw the US and shows them visually:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lupWYQdDgQ
> I live within a 15 minute drive of just about everywhere I need to go on a regular basis. Why would I wait that long for the train when I could just be there already?
Of course, for places you go regularly, you don't need a train or a car. I live in a place I can walk everywhere in 10 min or less. And with 15 min on my bike I can literally be on an actual mountain/natural trail.
Have you considered that trains are also useful if you don't use them regularly? Do you never want to drink or smoke weed? Do you never go to another place where you don't have a car available. Do you understand that there are people in the world who can't drive for various reasons.
And you don't actually wait for a train for 15min, you just do literally 5s of planning by looking at the clock. Even with 0 planning the majority of the time you would wait 7min or less.
If railways were in place, people would have built around the railway destinations, just like cities throughout history were typically built on waterways for easy transport of goods.
The flexibility of the car encourages sprawl which gets you into a situation exactly like what you're describing, where it just seems obvious that trains aren't good enough. The same sort of sprawl just wouldn't exist in a train-dominated transport system.
Commuting.
It’s how nearly all of my coworkers commute, even though we live in different cities and leave at vastly different times