> "Passenger planes with speed beyond Mach four" and "superconductive magnetic levitation railways at 500 km/h" probably seemed like reasonable extrapolations of current trends at the time.
I'm a bit upset we can't have this today.
I'm a bit upset we can't have this today.
That is right around 500 KM/H. I think we are technologically capable of this if a government really _wanted_.
Even Uzbekistan and Morocco now operate high speed trains, and a high speed connection of the Baltics into the rest of Europe is being built.
(It is a bit weird that the New World as a whole is so bearish on HSR. For example, a Trans-Canadian high speed rail would connect all the major metropolises in a single line, as most of the Canadian population lives close to the US border. At the very least, a Toronto - Ottawa - Montréal - Québec line would make a lot of sense. Further west the terrain might just be too unforgiving.)
"The Shanghai maglev is the world's first commercial high-speed maglev ... Prior to May 2021 the cruising speed was 431 km/h ..."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lathen_train_collision
The slowing of this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_maglev_train is caused more by economical factors like ridership and electricity costs.
With a single line, you would also need to choose between serving Edmonton (like the CN mainline) or Calgary (like the CP mainline). VIA rail currently skips Calgary even though it's the bigger/faster growing city.
Really, you need at least 3 lines because you also have to go both north and south of Lake Huron. And that's not even getting into Atlantic Canada.
Edmonton and Calgary would require two lines, yes, and quite long ones. These may be already too far away.
[0] https://natural-resources.canada.ca/maps-tools-publications/...
A lot of people can live in a place it's where it's difficult to build traditional rail, let alone HSR. Also places where HSR might work can be filled with people and existing construction which you can't always just uproot for rail.
If you travel, say, from Rome to Florence by Frecciarossa, the line goes through six galleries of total length of some 40 km.
Human settlements are a bigger challenge. People don't like to be uprooted, and small communities along the way don't benefit from HSRs, so they have an incentive to oppose them.
In the meantime, those really inefficient gas guzzling cars still rule.