Maybe we should build more railways. The ground is more stable than the air.
Air travel actually has a lower fatality rate per mile than trains do. Rail crossings can be dangerous places.
Not only are most trains not Shinkansen, not even most trains in Japan are Shinkansen.
Sounds like a good investment to me regardless of rail speed.
Is it not somewhat true that rail/freight companies have more authority over the land that their lines run through than the regions do? I may be talking out of my ass here, but I feel cities and provinces in Canada pretty much have to yield to CN or BNSF in some form or another; they operate their own police afaik. Railyards seem to be regarded as defacto permanent fixtures in terms of urban infrastructure.
On the other hand, who says you have to do the entire country at once? Perfect is the enemy of good and all that.
There’s only 3 US states with a density higher than that (Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and New Jersey) and an additional 2 US states of at least 220 people per sqkm (Maryland and Connecticut).
The US isn’t population dense enough for such transportation to make sense.
I do tend to prefer rail whenever viable, and the cascades route is already halfway decent, just not competitive on any front except ease of access with flying.
People underestimate how spread out US cities are.
Tokyo has 8.9M people while LA has 3.9M people; half the number. Osaka (3rd largest) is 2.7M people while San Jose (3rd largest) is just under 1M people; again, half the number. The distance from Tokyo to Osaka is 500km, while from LA to San Jose is 550km. (In both cases, the 2nd largest city is nearby the largest.)
You have half the justification in CA you do in Japan, looking at similar urban areas. In the case of Japan, connecting those two cities goes through another 3 with over 1M population (and totaling over 7M together).
US cities are spread out and relatively low population.
The US historically had much more passenger rail than it currently does. You haven't provided any convincing reasons why that shouldn no longer be workable in the modern day.
Paris has 2M people and Bordeaux has 1M people (sixth largest urban area in France), they are 500 km apart. How come France is able to operate a dedicated high-speed line between these cities? The third largest city on that line is Tours with 360k people or so.
California has almost the same population density as France, actually, but it's less spread out so just one line would be much more useful than a single line is in France.
Canada just announced a high-speed line project between Québec, Montreal and Toronto, by the way.
All can be solved with lots of money (and the space issues can be solved with even more money).
It seems to be the contrary to me. In Japan or France (in the denser places of these countries, because they have plenty of low density areas) building a whole new dedicated rail network was (and still is, see the Bordeaux-Toulouse LGV project) a major undertaking because there's no way to avoid built-up areas. The high-speed lines go from city center to city center, and we're talking about Paris and Tokyo here.
The Shinkansen and TGV use dedicated rail networks, that are built from scratch and are still being expanded. TGV can use legacy lines as well at low speed (including at grade road crossings, although these have almost completely been replaced today) not sure about Shinkansen.
In contrast, it seems to me like it should be easier in the US to find space for cheaper bypasses, tunnels and bridges since it's less dense.
Hell, a lot of towns with good rail access nowadays in the US only exist BECAUSE the rail line was built there.
It's hilarious how often "but density" is wheeled out to complain how we can't do trains when, not only did we use trains to create density, but the US has regions that are denser than Europe and could easily support comprehensive rail. The US is a place where people are unwilling to buy a car that can't go 300 miles on a whim. People used to take the trains for day long trips.
There is no excuse but political. We could talk about how expensive it is to build anything in the US but the US has always had massive pork in large projects and is so fucking rich that if we stopped giving free tax breaks to billionaires and maybe go a decade without having to artificially inflate our economy we could build the most expensive railroad network in the world with giant kickbacks included and STILL benefit and afford it.
Says who? Right now, in reality, the only thing that makes sense is comparing existing flights with existing train routes.
It’s not really fair though, because the aircraft has so much force acting against it from how fast it’s moving. If somehow a jet was moving at train speeds and could only use its aerodynamic surfaces to slow down, it would probably take a while.
That's a completely irrelevant metric.
The only thing that matters is my risk of injury/death per passenger mile. Trains are much worse. End of story.
What you're saying is that trains get into far more accidents, but that don't injure/kill you. On top of still being much more likely to injure/kill you.
And you think that's a good thing...?
There have been 7 passenger deaths in the UK in the last 20 years, with around 60 billion passenger km each year.
That seems to be of the same magnitude as aircraft passenger deaths per km, though I can't find those statistics in precisely the same form.
And much slower. Most people prefer shorter discomfort over a longer one.
Also sometimes more expensive because train service is much more monopolized due to the need for infrastructure betweem stations.
> sometimes more expensive
Examples? Because that seems patently ridiculous on its face given the differences in energy requirements.
There are plenty of places with functional rail systems to compare to. This stuff isn't rocket science.
DB quote for "high"speed train from Frakfurt to Paris: from 151 €
Flight from Frakfurt to Paris: options as low as 76 €
This isn't a 100% fair comparison but hopefully serves to demonstrate the absurdity.
Still, there's a decent chance I'd personally choose to pay that premium for the comfort afforded by train travel while nonetheless being disgusted by the broader situation.
The accident occurred on the ground, any aircraft is susceptible, “more trains” doesn’t make it less so.
Eh maybe. That's not much longer than Beijing-Shanghai. Rail can definitely be competitive.
> The accident occurred on the ground
Plane crashes generally do. Given that all plane journeys involve at least one takeoff and landing, it's fair to consider collisions and incidents during those as part of a safety comparison.
Connecting two growing mega cities by rail in a country that can still build things vs two mid-tier cities in two different countries, neither of which build anything without a decade of delays and 3x the budget (before the projects get cancelled), is not a good analogy to use against flight IMO.
That ends up being circular though. The main reason the US and Canada can't build anything is that they don't build anything.
CAHSR for ~100b
A completely useless underground palace at grand central for 11b
Really can’t build shit in this country without getting shaken down by unions, nimbys, lawyers, and consultants
Toronto and Minneapolis are villages comparatively.
There are significant air routes in China between higher population cities than the MSP, YYZ pairing
Now what is the demand between Minneapolis and Toronto?
The original assertion is that train can probably replace airplane on this route. That doesn't make any sense.
> and also 10-12 flights per day
That are probably those who want to travel directly between the two cities. So even though train option exists people still choose to fly.
Which would be the same for a North American rail network. Kunming was Minneapolis in this analogy, trains to Toronto could carry on to Boston or Montreal or New York just as trains to Changsa carry on to Shanghai.
> The original assertion is that train can probably replace airplane on this route.
I don't think anyone claimed that it would replace planes completely. It could be competitive, it could be an option for people who want it.
> Maybe we should build more railways. The ground is more stable than the air.
As if this accident could have been avoided if there were trains between Minneapolis and Toronto. I am saying that is wrong, because the passengers on this route wouldn’t take train. High speed trains would help if there is enough demand. There is not. Your examples are for a different market that don’t apply. You didn’t prove otherwise.
Trains are good. I love trains.
> It could be competitive, it could be an option for people who want it
Not for this route.
You don't have to replace every flight to reduce the amount of flights, or to give people an alternative.
> High speed trains would help if there is enough demand. There is not. Your examples are for a different market that don’t apply. You didn’t prove otherwise.
The population sizes are the same. The geography is similar. The differences are political choices, not immutable facts.
Another example I like to cite is of Denver, CO, which grew roughly seven-fold in population in the decade after it was linked to the then-new US Transcontinental Railroad, 1870--1880:
<https://www.uncovercolorado.com/colorado-train-stations/>
Rail build-outs competing with existing air links is another matter of course, though experience in Europe, Japan, and China should help provide useful data.
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Notes:
1. Discussion of LA freeway speeds generally, noting several stretches (including those recently widened) netting < 20 mph: "Five years after Sepulveda Pass widening, travel times on the 405 keep getting worse" (2019) <https://la.curbed.com/2019/5/6/18531505/405-widening-traffic...>. I'm not finding the specific horses-to-cars comparison though I'm sure I've encountered it before.
At typical HSR speeds of 185 mph / 300 kph, that extends to ~2,200 mi / 3,600 km. That's sufficient for travel from SF to Chicago, or NYC to Salt Lake (with range to spare).
(Both calculations presume 12 hours and operating largely at top speeds, both of which may be atypical in practice, but do satisfy the maximum possible range question.)
Travel within major population corridors, generally the east coast (Boston, Minneapolis, Miami, Houston) or west (San Diego, Phoenix, Seattle, Salt Lake, Denver) should be highly viable.
And as is often noted, rail operates city-centre to city-centre, and typically has fewer security checks and delays.