How to speed up US passenger rail, without bullet trains | Hacker News Reader

How to speed up US passenger rail, without bullet trains

bloomberg.com

65 pointspetethomas126 comments

> The Momentum framework calls on Amtrak and commuter rail agencies to […] shift their focus from increasing the geographic coverage and capacity of their rail services

> When making changes to rail infrastructure or services, state and local railroad agencies often must negotiate with the freight railroad companies that own most of America’s track network. These companies [are] reluctant to allow more frequent passenger service that could reduce the amount of time their freight trains have access to track.

This article completely fails to mention the actual cause of our modern situation. Before focusing on increasing geographical coverage we would first need to focus on not decreasing geographic coverage. Check out the Abandoned & Out-of-Service Rail map of North America and you can see the result of massive corporate consolidation where newly-combined railroads abandon parts of each constituent company's former network to end up with the most track they can run for the least money. There is zero redundancy left: https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=10akDabya8L6nWIJi-4...

Dang, there's a track on there, within a bike ride from me, that goes all the way to the biggest city in my state and passes within a few hundred feet of the university I attended. That could have made things easier.

> end up with the most track they can run for the least money

ITYM "least track?"

The railraods are all obsessed with this metric called "capital ratio" which is the revenue intensity of their equipment.

Most of corporate america cares about "operating ratio" (how much money do you spend operating your business versus revenue). Railroads are a somewhat uniquely capital-intensive business, since they're the only transportation industry that owns and maintains their own roads. They consequently have come to see their best metric for efficiency is how small their capital asset base is, versus their revenue.

This leads to the joke that "the optimal railroad has no track and runs no trains."

There is a need for increased geographical coverage in the right corridors. Many corridors with high population density are just not covered.

As bad as the passenger rail situation is in the US, I can totally understand how it got this way compared to other countries from a pure geographic point of view.

The US landscape is ideal for freight trains and not quite as ideal for passenger trains.

If you look at countries like Japan, the geography makes a perfect condition for passenger trains to be most ideal. Railroad as a shipping method for goods doesn't make a lot of sense, you can just put goods on ships that travel along the coasts and for shorter journeys trucks make more sense.

Or look at China: massively higher population, and their population is much more concentrated in the East of the country than the US with its split up coastal populations. Maybe we could say that a high speed train between Indianapolis and Cleveland would be nice, but there isn't even a single direct commercial direct flight between those destinations, so how will anyone fill up a train? China's huge population makes it an extremely ideal high speed rail use case.

But in the US, putting goods on a train from Chicago to LA makes way more sense than any sort of truck or ship situation. And even a high speed train on that route wouldn't make a whole lot of sense compared to a flight.

But there's definitely room to improve geographical coverage in specific corridors where that expansion would have great positive impact.

How does the geographic context explain how the US was (apparently) an excellent fit for passenger rail until the 1920s-1930s, but not anymore?

I don't think geography is the explanation. US geography is great for passenger rail. Japanese geography is terrible for it (too many mountains). In my opinion Japan's passenger rail situation today would be no different than the US if American rail companies had managed Japanese rail lines throughout the 20th century.

It's nice to imagine that geography is the reason, and so everything is as it should be, this was the fated result. But that's simply not the case.

Of course, rail is not a good fit for a weekend getaway from LA to New York. Even in Japan, where you can ride the bullet train all the way from Kyushu to Hokkaido, almost anyone would book a flight for that unless they really hated flying. But that doesn't mean that rail isn't well suited to American geography.

Planes did not exists.

Most of the railway trips people were taking would be fairly short distance trips you'd now hop in a car for, not a plane. Inter-urban transit, not trans-continental. You can look at old railway connectivity maps of the US to see the kind of station density available along the lines. This is why the size of the US continent is not a really good explanation. It's like saying "Europe is too big for trains, which is why nobody rides trains in the Netherlands". You don't take a plane from Amsterdam to Rotterdam, and you wouldn't have taken a plane to get from Boston to Providence either. Trains also can serve small towns that airplanes don't, because you don't stop a plane at every town along the way between city centers. In fact, many towns just sprang up around train stations.

> In fact, many towns just sprang up around train stations.

And this is how the Japanese system works so well. The trains don't make money, but the massive improvements to land value near stations does and the train companies own that land.

They get to make money, society gets the personal and economic benefits of a functional public transit system.

Passenger trains on their own fundamentally do not make money for the operators in most cases, except perhaps specialty routes like airports: the value is distributed into society, but doesn't all come back as ticket prices. So any system where a train company is just a train company will either need heavy subsidy or will slowly wither away under "efficiency" drives.

What they do have is a huge pile of capital intensive resources that are juicy targets for vampiric extraction and captive markets that are slow to extract themselves when exploited (and slow to come back).

Long distance (200-800km) passenger rail operators do make money, as long as the infrastructure is at least partially publicly financed.

Which is also true for anything happening on roads.

Well, quite. A fully ticket-funded passenger rail system is a rare, rare thing. There are simply better ways to make money than going solo on building and running a railway and not either diversifying or getting state support.

Yes, it's true for roads, but no-one expects roads to all turn a profit in the way that rail lines have to. Even for place with road use fees for motorways, most people can access the road system for rather less than the cost to construct and maintain it.

Unprofitable roads don't get closed very often.

    > The trains don't make money

This is untrue. From here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farebox_recovery_ratio ... look at all the entries in Japan where ratio >= 100%. It is a lot. This one is bonkers to me (JR Central Rail: 245.95%), but easily explained by owning and operating one of the busiest bullet train routes in the world between Tokyo and Osaka.

And, this does not include all of the (profitable) real estate projects these companies use to further increase ridership!

Well, I stand corrected!

However, it may not include the real estate income, but it does include the income from extra ridership created by the real estate being near the station.

It's true, the bullet train prints money for JR. But there are also many train companies that are only profitable because of their real estate holdings around the lines, especially smaller private companies like Tokyu.

    > the bullet train prints money for JR

The bullet train in Japan only "prints money" for one JR company: JR Central, thanks to the busiest(?) bullet train route in the world: Tokyo to Osaka. Most other bullet train lines in Japan are break-even or loss making, but supported by the central gov't (for social policy).

    > only profitable because of their real estate holdings around the lines

Again about Tokyu: This is untrue. I could only find stats from 2005, but all train lines in the Tokyo metropolitan area (including Yokohama) have improved farebox recovery ratios in the last 20 years.

Here: https://www.lincolninst.edu/app/uploads/2024/04/2198_1524_LP...

Page 296: Farebox recovery (%), 2005 125.3 (Tokyu Corporation’s entire network)

After the opening of the last Tokyo Metro line (Fukutoshin) -- with direct connection to Tokyu Toyoko line (Shibuya to Yokohama), the farebox recovery is surely much higher. I guess over 150%, but probably closer to 175%. The trains are jammed 8+ hours per day. This means that, excluding real estate development, the Tokyu train lines are profitable by themselves.

    > especially smaller private companies like Tokyu.

About Tokyu: "[S]maller"? Absolutely not. It is surely one of the top 5 largest private rail companies in Japan by revenue/profits. They are huge in the Tokyo area.

EDIT -- Re-org only.

    > How does the geographic context explain how the US was (apparently) an excellent fit for passenger rail until the 1920s-1930s, but not anymore?

Simple answer: Cars and aeroplanes and gov't money for both, and lack of gov't money for passenger trains.

    > Even in Japan, where you can ride the bullet train all the way from Kyushu to Hokkaido, almost anyone would book a flight for that unless they really hated flying.

To be clear, the purpose of a bullet train between Kyushu and Hokkaido isn't to serve end to end. Rather, it is to serve region to region: Kyushu to Osaka/Kyoto, then Osaka/Kyoto to Nagoya, then Nagoya to Tokyo, and Tokyo to... Sendai(?). Honestly, I don't know why Japan is wasting money to build the bullet train to Sapporo, Hokkaido. It will never get enough passengers to make economic sense. After 800-900km of distance, it hardly makes sense to ride a bullet train. Get on a short flight instead. (Tangent: We really need electric aeroplanes to service these 90 minute routes in most countries.)

     > Simple answer: Cars and aeroplanes and gov't money for both, and lack of gov't money for passenger trains.

That has nothing to do with geography and everything to do with politics.

    > How does the geographic context explain

Let me summarise further: It does not. That was the point of my answer.

Exactly! That's exactly my point. That is why the geography and the size of the contentinent are mostly irrelevant, and trains don't have to be competitive with flights for trips between terminus stations, because most travel takes place between stations a shorter distance along the lines.

Someone made a good argument on Reddit when discussing Australia which is also has a slowish rail network.

It is a 3hr drive Sydney to Canberra and 4hr on train. Mainly because the train track was originally for freight so has more curves than needed for passenger.

They said rather than aim for a super fast train just improve the tracks we have and get the time down to 3hr to compete with the car.

This is a good point because then you get more revenues and usage (the trains are full right now but infrequent - maybe they can run them every 15 minutes)

Then you can go make the case for an even faster train for 2050.

The Japanese Shinkansen is something else. Doing my first decent trip on one this week and can't wait!

>Then you can go make the case for an even faster train for 2050.

I'm very sorry, but such timelines are extremely disheartening and sound like a joke. The problem is, factually, other countries can build out HSRs within 5-10 year horizons, from planning to finishing a route. If it takes 2+ generations to even get a single line... I'm not sure what I can say.

I understand bureaucracy and problem solving processes work differently in our countries, but incredibly sad to see how a person can't see a significant progress within their own lifetimes. I'm not sure when I became such a defeatist, but it is what it is.

I think once the decision is made 10 yrs is fine. But Australia has a smaller population than most so you'd need to prove decent usage first.

that your name is tokio yoyo is sort of funny to me because if you look at shinkansen build/planning timelines, it is absolutely on the order of 2050 for extensions.

the japanese have a world-class trainsystem and it's built by putting one foot in front of the other for decades, not expecting it to be built overnight.

of course, you can build it faster, but then it is more expensive. so what's the priority? it's easier to fund high speed rail projects in developed nations by long, sustained investment that is easily planned for rather than having to suddenly come up with billions of dollars and then deal with the political fallout of inevitable cost-overruns associated with rushing things.

(Although sometimes these projects are built overnight, between departure of night and morning trains [1])

The Hokuriku shinkansen started construction in 1989 and opened reaching Nagano by 1997, just eight years later and in time for the 1998 Nagano Olympics. Of course they've built more extensions to it since then, most recently to Fukui just last year.

The Tokaido Shinkansen was on the drawing board in the late 1930s, and opened in 1964, after having been interrupted by the war and shelved for many years. A project starting today and opening in 2050 would be about that speed of development, although with the then-novel technology all being proven already one would hope things could be done a bit faster now.

[1] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_BYW4YYqG5A

Indeed. In fact, though government approval was granted in Dec 1958, the Shinkansen construction started only in April 1959. And it took five years to open. To say nothing of the fact that it only covered 300 miles and had huge cost overruns of 90% so that the total cost in today’s money would be an astounding $15 billion.

That line from Tokyo to Osaka needed sustained funding for a neverending half decade and wouldn’t have worked as well with just a burst of effort.

By comparison, these days we have much more advanced technology so the Central Subway in SF only cost $1.9 b for the extensive 1.7 miles it covers and though construction started as late as 2012, the line was open in the blink of an eye, and passengers were riding it ten years later.

Indeed, it is a triumph of our modern methods of not expecting things overnight that had this much larger and more complex project delivered so much faster.

An old master carpenter I knew once used to say “Measure a thousand times, then before you cut measure another thousand times. Then cut once”. In the many decades since I’ve known him he has built a single table that IKEA would be jealous of on his own. Any time I gaze upon it I am reminded of our extensive success with rail in California through sustained careful effort, never rushing, always with focus. As the Bene Gesserit say, “Our plans are measured in centuries”

Thank you for this :)

Well played

    > the line was open in the blink of an eye

This post is so well written, that I needed to do a double take to realise it was well-craft sarcasm. Up vote from me!

> I'm very sorry, but such timelines are extremely disheartening and sound like a joke. The problem is, factually, other countries can build out HSRs within 5-10 year horizons, from planning to finishing a route. If it takes 2+ generations to even get a single line... I'm not sure what I can say.

While there are places where the build out itself looks fast, in reality I think most any train line ever build spends decades in "would be a good idea" phase of planning. The Hokkaido Shinkansen idea was on the books since the 70s, and we're still just up to Hakodate!

The Utusnomiya rail line (a local tram line) was in the proposal phase since 2001, and launched in 2023. It's been super successful (profitable!), but was still 20+ years for a single line.

Having said all of that, plenty of ideas gestate for a while, so hooking into an existing idea and getting that actually happening feels like a very good use of energy compared to trying to come up with your own special new idea.

One large problem is passenger rail is a second class citizen on US rail, legally it’s supposed to be given priority but ultimately it’s all on private rail and enforcement is non existent so it’ll get delayed for things caused by cargo. I had an Amtrak journey that had to sit and wait for an hour or two to let the tracks cool after a particularly heavy cargo train had gone by.

I would counter this by offering: Long Island Railroad, MetroNorth, New Jersey Transit, MBTA Commuter Rail, Bay Area Rapid Transit, and Caltrain. (Sorry, I don't know about the Chicago system.) All of these are very good commuter rail systems that mostly own all of their track or have primary right-of-way, so undelayed by cargo trains.

But commuter rail is pretty different, right? The point of discussion was more around the restrictions of intercity.

Chicago's commuter rail system is called Metra (operating code MTX).

They own some of their own rails. UP and BNSF operate 4 of their commuter routes. CSX owns most of a few of the Metra operated routes.

Once, I was delayed 2 hours on Christmas Eve by a 1 Mile + Long freight train that broke down while crossing our main line pulling into the freight yard south of O'Hare Airport. A victim of CSX's "precision scheduled railroading".

Back when Metra pre-recorded the automated announcements, they specifically had one for delays caused by "freight train interference". The freight operators don't give a flying fuck who they interfere with, because they are empowered to.

Those are all local systems, all the cross country and intercity (for cities where their suburbs haven't merged like Chicago or the NE) stuff has to share tracks with cargo rail.

That lack of delays from cargo is also why they work a little better. One other big delay though is that basically none of the trains operate as expresses so they have loads of little stops along the way serving all the little towns along the route where little delays build up and by the end of the run they're sometimes hours behind schedule.

Mbta commuter rail is not a good system. I tried it for a month (Fitchburg line), the train was scheduled once an hour and was regularly half an hour or more late. The passes were exorbitantly expensive, too; more than the cost of car ownership for the same route. I so badly want it to work, I love the idea of it, but the day to day experience is comically bad.

I checked Wiki for more info about the MBTA Fitchburg line. I don't know from what station you rode, but MBTA commuter fares are much cheaper than the total cost of ownership of a car per mile. Estimates are about 81 cents per mile to drive a car (depreciation, fuel, maintenance, repairs, insurance, etc.) -- I Googled for it. Fitchburg station to North station is 53.7 miles, which would cost 43.50 USD to drive a car. The current MBTA fare is 12.25 USD -- much cheaper than owning a car.

Australia has a slowish rail network because it is sparsely populated. It is an extreme version of America, the distances between population centers are quite large and there's not much in-between. There's also not much reason for anyone from Sydney to visit Canberra, and if you do, you certainly need a car to get around.

Sydney to Canberra centre for government adjacent business you probably don't need a car. The train is near parliament and probably near your office and hotel. Maybe a taxi to get to the city centre which is 5 min away.

The main place in Australia where it would make sense to make high speed rail is the big Sydney-Melbourne route as it's been the world's 3rd or so busiest air route for many decades now. Currently it's about a 2 hour flight at a cost of a few hundred dollars with flights leaving multiple times per hour. By car this journey takes 7-8 hours, and these are the cities where you can do a lot without needing a car, so there's no incentive to take yours.

The other places where it might make sense are Sydney-Brisbane and maybe Adelaide-Melbourne since both are also 7-8 hour drives and about 2 hour flights. Last I travelled Adelaide-Melbourne the trip by train was 13 hours and by bus it was about the same because of the route and extra stops.

As another commenter has pointed out, in the smaller Australian cities you pretty much need a car to get around. So realistically the train journey is competing with the 2 hour plane ride rather than the 8 hour drive. Because you'll either drive and have a car at your destination or fly/train and need a hire car or taxis when you get there.

Don't get me wrong, I like trains and I wish Australia was less like Los Angeles and more like Europe, but it would take serious investment by the Government to make this happen and compete with the airlines.

Sounds a lot like Boston-NYC-Washington DC. Multiple flights per hour, 4hr drive between closest pair of cities, but thankfully there is a railroad that takes about the same time of driving, depending on the (rail/highway) traffic of the day.

Rode the Shinkansen twice in the last week (Tokyo<->Osaka). Not the most scenic, but you do have a spot where you pass Mt Fuji.

Not sure if this route goes the full 320 km/h but it was plenty fast!

Loved the convenience and ease though. Having to schlep to the airport and deal with all the hassle of flying sucks by comparison.

Rock up to the station, buy a ticket, wait 30 minutes and go.

This is a better solution. I think a lot of high speed rail enthusiasts think that if we build the passengers will come. Its really unproven, I think American cities are so different to most of the world high speed rail would be unpopular. Very few people want to go from downtown one city to another - most city centers aren't that nice and when you get to your destination you'll need a car anyway.

20 years ago I backpacked around Europe on a Eurail pass for all of April and part of May. I even paid the supplement for the high speed trains.

Most of the time, the trains were all but empty.

I think eventually Boston-NYC type routes will be handled by quad-copter type drones that land right in the city center. That type of passenger rail will be obsolete

For one, that was 20 years ago. Ridership has increased significantly since through a combination of deliberate EU policy and efforts to remove the barriers that made long distance rail journeys so terrible decades ago. Old experiences riding long distance international trains (likely at non-peak hours), outside peak tourist season aren't necessarily representative of the modern experience.

Passenger rail competes with highways, not airplanes.

Not entirely true… Eurostar killed London to Brussels and London to Paris flight numbers

Doesn't invalidate what I said.

Well it kinda does… over shorter distances planes compete with trains

I far prefer taking the train from London to Amsterdam over flying and it's slightly longer time wise

For Paris and Brussels it's about the same time

Demand for traveling from city to city in the US is unproven? What is 819 million domestic airplane passengers in 2023? [0] That's an average of 2.2 million people per day. Granted flying will almost always win for cross-country trips, but I'd bet a significant chunk of those flights are within a range competitive with HSR.

[0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/197790/us-airline-domest...

GP hypothesized the situation "from downtown one city to another", which is distinct from airport-to-airport.

How is it distinct in any way that would undermine their argument? Do people go airport to airport to then not drive, where people going to downtown would want to drive? Their point is that people go to other cities without their vehicle all the time with plane travel, so high speed rail would have plenty of demand up to a certain distance.

Amtrak's ridership has been growing and hit an all time high. The Northeast Corridor is a profitable route which is held back by century old infrastructure. If it actually had real high speed spanning the whole route it's ridership absolutely go up. Moreover your comments on not wanting to go from city center to city center are very off. Going from Union Station DC to Penn Station Philly, or NYC is really nice. Have you ever rode Amtrak, specifically that route?

The ridership and convenience of the Acela route is really not representative of the rest of the country.

It's extremely speculative to extrapolate that dense route with the induced demand for travelers going from Kansas City union station to Denver union station... with absolutely nothing in-between.

You don't need to cover the entire country. Building out routes that are already seeing demand would be plenty.

Yes, that is, to within a rounding error, Acela.

The new Borealis route (short run of the Empire Builder from Chicago to St. Paul) was profitable in like, weeks, after it started running. It is consistently sold out.

There are so many parameters that it is impossible to figure out. They should probably load all params into a virtual model and have an AI try out everything.

Besides the obvious investments making tickets more expensive a different example would be if you accelerate faster you need more rails maintenance.

You can also leave carts behind and pick them up at stops so that people who need it have all the time to get in and out. If you do that (like with many options) it gets marvelously complicated really fast.

Even if you try fit an intercity (that doesn't stop everywhere) it will have to be at the right place at the right time to pass the other train(s)

You can also not make it fast and make the trip more enjoyable. You can just stop for 30 min or an hour at each station and have stores and museums at the station bring in more revenue than tickets.

If I had to guess the most successful trick for the US would be to have people bring their car on the train.

There is no secret lost knowledge that enabled a steam-powered train to go from New York to Chicago in 16 hours in the 1930s. We simply do not care to run fast passenger trains anymore since they have largely been replaced by domestic air travel. The current NYC to Chicago train takes 20 hours and is routinely several hours delayed... all we have to do is invest in infrastructure and rebuild our rail system, but that won't happen unless it's "sexy" and can compete with air travel, and the best way to do that is with HSR. So while our passenger rail system _could_ be a lot faster (without true HSR) if it was run well, I don't think that's going to happen until we get the marketability/"sexiness" of HSR.

> We simply do not care to run fast passenger trains anymore since they have largely been replaced by domestic air travel.

That's a self-fulfilling prophecy. First-class passenger trains are much more comfortable, roomier, and less expensive, but as long as they're so wildly slower, they have a hard time competing with air travel.

I'm not sure they're much less expensive. To pick an arbitrary weeklong Tuesday-to-Tuesday trip in May, between New York and Chicago, the cheapest direct Amtrak fare—in coach, not in first class as you mentioned—is $336 (and 19 hours each way), whereas the same trip on Spirit Air is $96 (and 2 hours 30 minutes each way).

The cheapest first class train fare is $1,621 for the round trip, vs $385 for first class airfare.

Per hour they will be much cheaper. Part of self-fulfilling prophecy is that per hour price is mostly inelastic, so as trains get slower and take more time the price rises. And higher price means less people take trains...

Per hour walking is even cheaper.

> Per hour they will be much cheaper.

How many people do you think care about the per-hour cost of travel. I feel confident saying that the vast majority of the traveling public wants to spend as little time and money as possible to get to their destinations.

If I’m not mistaken, that’s the joke.

D’oh! It completely flew over my head. Thanks. I’ve heard people who are really into trains bill rail travel as being worth it purely for the experience, so it sounded plausible that they were arguing it seriously

I think it's less a joke than an observation. There's some per hour cost that's approximately fixed, so for a given mode of travel the slower it gets the more expensive it becomes. The lack of investment in rail is a vicious cycle.

Train fares are just smoking crack and it’s so frustrating, because I want to take trains. I love everything about it but the price.

plus an hour on the train, or a hundred bucks in a taxi on the new york side, and likewise on the chicago side, plus security screening. and luggage is free too, I think?

so mostly just faster.

> First-class passenger trains are much more comfortable, roomier, and less expensive, but as long as they're so wildly slower, they have a hard time competing with air travel.

Maybe, but around a third of all tourism spend in the US is business travel related [0]. You cannot justify spending an overnight train ride from NYC to Chicago when you can reach there within 2 hours by flight.

The US is MASSIVE - much larger than most countries, and population centers are extremely spread out once you leave the Northeast. Outside the NE, the math (time wise or financially) doesn't play out well for rail based public transit.

You see the same dynamics in China as well - the overwhelming majority of medium-long distance public transit is along the extremely dense coast.

Expecting a French style TGV is unrealistic as long as San Francisco to Los Angeles is the same distance as Paris to Berlin - except with almost no major population centers in between, and plenty of massive mountain ranges. Same for the rest of the US outside of the NE. Similar extent with NY to Chicago as well (roughly the same distance as Berlin to St Petersburg)

[0] - https://www.statista.com/topics/1832/business-travel/#topicO...

I don't see why it's a problem for a potential rail service for San Francisco and Los Angeles that there are no heavily populated areas between the two cities. There's no reason why you couldn't fill up a train with passengers at the start and travel non-stop to the destination, just as the vast majority of airlines operate.

Trains still have all their usual benefits including better passenger comfort and higher energy efficiency, and there is the option to build intermediate stations if the demand increases in the future.

I would also question the claim that overnight trains cannot be justified for business travel. If the cost is comparable to a hotel room - which is a big 'if', granted - this allows employees to be better rested and therefore work more effectively during the day.

> between the two cities. There's no reason why you couldn't fill up a train with passengers at the start and travel non-stop to the destination, just as the vast majority of airlines operate.

This isn't flat land. There are expansive mountain ranges that make it difficult to build and any flat land that is buildable is ALSO prime agricultural land that is worth millions.

Just to recoup the cost you end up with ticket prices comparable to a flight.

> I would also question the claim that overnight trains cannot be justified for business travel. If the cost is comparable to a hotel room - which is a big 'if', granted - this allows employees to be better rested and therefore work more effectively during the day.

Yeah no. I don't want employees to come in unshowered, and they still need a place to keep their luggage. Furthermore, plenty of people like maintaining their daily routine or spending time with their SOs. Flying a couple hours, staying at a hotel overnight, getting work done, and immediately bugging out back home is the norm.

> This isn't flat land. There are expansive mountain ranges that make it difficult to build and any flat land that is buildable is ALSO prime agricultural land that is worth millions.

Japan's Shinkansen started service in 1964, and the country is known for its mountains and earthquakes. Hell, forget Japan, California's mountain ranges somehow didn't stop America from building I-5, I-10, I-80, and what not, back in the 80s.

"Prime agricultural land" is non sequitur - those lands are sold by acres.

> This isn't flat land. There are expansive mountain ranges that make it difficult to build and any flat land that is buildable is ALSO prime agricultural land that is worth millions.

Flat land is convenient of course, but I don't think mountains are a make-or-break factor. It looks like the Interstate 5 already takes a viable route through the Tejon Pass, and as the land will already be publicly-owned it is a candidate for cut-and-cover or an elevated railway. A 5-mile tunnel to bypass Gorman would eliminate the tightest curve along the route.

Alternatively, for a detour of an hour or so the railway can be routed eastward through Los Angeles and through the Cajon Pass instead, thence following the path of Route 58.

But all of this doesn't negate my original point - that regardless of the feasibility of a railway, a lack of intermediate stops is not necessarily a disadvantage.

> Yeah no. I don't want employees to come in unshowered, and they still need a place to keep their luggage. Furthermore, plenty of people like maintaining their daily routine or spending time with their SOs. Flying a couple hours, staying at a hotel overnight, getting work done, and immediately bugging out back home is the norm.

The on-board facilities are among the easiest challenges to address. There are plenty of examples of showers on long-distance trains, and it's not much cost to build a few at the terminus station. Luggage can be sent ahead and lockers can be provided at stations.

Spending time with family? Those 'couple of hours flying' can add up: that's time that could have been spent with family, too!

Infrastructure can also drive development in places that it reaches. If you work in SF but fancy living in Hollister, and the train only takes 30 minutes to get there, why not?

Yep, but that does not need to be justified by a HSR expansion.

You could justify a San Benito County expansion as part of a Caltrain electrification and expansion project for a fraction of the cost and headaches.

And do the same for San Joaquin County to the Bay+Sacramento, San Bernardino County to LA, and Imperial Valley to San Diego.

In fact, this is what the CA government has been doing after treating the HSR as de facto moribund.

The proposed CAHSR business plan calls for 2 peak hourly trains plus 2 additional trains per day stopping nowhere between the Bay Area and Los Angeles. 2 of these are suggested to be actual non-stop SF to LA Union Station, even though bypassing San Jose is pretty crazy. But anyway you are right: it's no problem at all.

There are also plenty of population centers between SF and LA which is why trains are going to stop in Fresno and Bakersfield (combined pop: 2.2 million). Also Palmdale. If Palmdale is nowhere then Brightline West is also a train to nowhere.

Alephnerd is making the same mistake that many nerds have made. They are arguing about the existing passenger, while the point of the project is to serve the next ten million Californians.

China’s new high speed train from Beijing to Shanghai — about the same distance as between New York and Chicago — takes a little less than four and a half hours. That’s about two hours longer than a flight between the two cities. If you include the time spent arriving early, going through security, etc, it probably comes out about even.

And the region between Beijing to Shanghai is fairly flat and densely populated (Tianjin, Shandong, Jiangsu, Hebei), which makes it easier to justify and build out the associated infra, as plenty of other slower lines can also be run concurrently - specifically by connecting Tianjin (one of the most important cities in China)

Meanwhile, the only major population centers between NY and Chicago are Pittsburg and Columbus - both of whom combined have a fraction of the population that Jiagnsu or Shandong have.

Furthermore, land acquisition is different in a country like the US versus China. Mass expropriation or eminent domain of land is politically untenable in the US, but something that is easier to implement in China as a significant amount of land remains under local municipal ownership instead of private ownership.

If you pass Columbus, you’d also go through Indianapolis. Or you could go north and pass through Cleveland and Detroit.

Anyway, if you only support building infrastructure in regions of the U.S. that are as densely populated as eastern China, you’d basically never build anything.

> If you pass Columbus, you’d also go through Indianapolis. Or you could go north and pass through Cleveland and Detroit.

Which

1. Already exists

2. Leads to the same problem as before - the population size just does not justify those investments, nor is there any business demand when a flight will always remain faster.

> Anyway, if you only support building infrastructure in regions of the U.S. that are as densely populated as eastern China, you’d basically never build anything

I support building infrastructure that solves an actual problem - and public transit connectivity between NY and Chicago isn't one of those.

It will remain slower than flight transit (so most business and plenty of personal travel will remain flight based) and car ownership remains high in the US, so for personal travel, the independence of driving would still outcompete rail.

Those billions of dollars on such a hypothetical are better spent on plenty of other alternative programs - for example the local transit expansion grants which the Biden admin bundled as part of the IIJA, which helped expand bus and local rail transit instead.

Even China has stopped financing these kinds of mega-projects becuase of tightening financial due dilligence, and tries to tie investments with an actual business case [0]. Heck, now prices are roughly the same between a domestic flight and HSR on the major lines in China.

[0] - https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/13/business/china-bullet-tra...

----------

The only network that could even justify a high speed rail is the DC-Philadelphia-NYC-Boston corridor (so an extended Acela Line), but are you also fine with the federal government expropriating land to speed up development OR spending decades democratically building consensus.

And even then DCA to JFK or Logan will remain time competitive for business travel

> car ownership remains high in the US, so for personal travel, the independence of driving would still outcompete rail.

I mean, this is the catch-22 that prevents a lot of public transit projects from being built. Car ownership is high largely because in most places there is no viable public transit. Then people oppose building public transit because car ownership is high!

> Anyway, if you only support building infrastructure in regions of the U.S. that are as densely populated as eastern China, you’d basically never build anything

Correct.

You really just hurt the feelings of Cleveland there

It's worth noting that at least in China, you must go through security checks before boarding bullet trains which include ID verification, X-rays of passenger and their luggage, and some liquid checks (staff may ask you to take a sip of your drink to confirm it's safe). Depending on the time of day, it is a bit quicker.

The main time saver is that the train stations are much more central. Say you you need to leave your office in Beijing's financial district and meet a client at their office in Shanghai's financial district. The station in Bejing will be 6km from your office vs the airport (30km), and you'll get off the train 9km from your client (instead of 45km at the airport).

> If you include the time spent arriving early, going through security, etc, it probably comes out about even.

Yeah, but that only lasts until someone figures out a clever way to use a train as a weapon, in which case you get to add the same security time to the front of the trip -- or even longer, since we've actually managed to get the airport security time down a bit over the past two decades. It would seem optimistic to try to scale usage of rail without accounting for the (time, safety, etc) costs that come with increased usage of rail...

Without disagreeing, it is a weird one to see described as a marketing problem. The political process is extremely low bandwidth; it is tough to express an opinion on more than one issue with one vote and usually the priority is not transport. Presumably the major reason that HSR isn't being deployed is that it is uneconomic or there is no legal way to do it.

>We simply do not care to run fast passenger trains anymore since they have largely been replaced by domestic air travel.

Trains replace road trips, not air travel. You can travel from New York to Miami for $175 on Amtrak. That's a lot cheaper and much more comfortable than driving 1300 miles.

Saying you can do this faster or possibly cheaper on a budget airline is missing the point, because traveling on a budget airline is not enjoyable. There's no scenery. You're packed in like sardines. Best case scenario, every hour you spend in the plane is miserable. Every hour you spend waiting in airport security lines is miserable. Every hour spent waiting on the runway for delays is miserable. Waiting for your baggage only to find it is lost again is miserable. You can't get up to stretch your legs, sit down, the seat belt light is on.

On the Amtrak there are dining cars, cafe cars, observation cars. There's five toilets on each car, you never have to wait. There's free wifi. There are no middle seats to be miserable in. You can bring your own beer and drink it on the train. You can't do any of that in car or on an airline. Riding the train is more fun than flying, and a lot less hazardous than driving. If it takes a little longer than flying, that just means more time for fun.

Except that NY to Miami route you cited takes 28 to 33 hours... You could do that trip in a single long day driving, plus save money if you're a group of 3+ people. And then you'd have a car at your destination, which is pretty mandatory in most parts of the US.

It might be decent for a solo traveler, but for the stereotypical family road trip to Florida, the car still wins out.

You're not going to drive 18 hours straight. It would be wildly dangerous for you to try as you will fall asleep at the wheel. Even if you tried it, you're going to have to make stops for gas, bathroom, and to eat, which will push the trip beyond one day. Which means you're going to have to get at least one hotel room along the way (more expense and time). And, you're assuming perfect traffic conditions, which doesn't exist, we all know.

You can go to the bathroom on the train. You can sleep on the train. You can eat on the train. Which means the 28 hours is the total time and the $175 is total price. Avg gas price is 3.37/gal. (https://ycharts.com/indicators/us_gas_price) Avg new car milage is 25 mpg, 52*3.37 is ... $175. Same as the train fare, but that's just the gas.

Taking the car is just dangerous and miserable IMO. Train wins.

My family used to do a very similar distance for summer road trips every year, and we always did it in a single day. Just pack the car the night before, leave early, and swap drivers every few hours when you stop for food or gas. The benefit is that it's way cheaper than five plane tickets or train tickets, and you have an entire car to fill up with stuff.

Like I said the train would probably work better for a solo traveller, but then why not fly? It's crazy to spend 28+ hours on a train when a plane ticket is around the same cost and 2 hours.

>It's crazy to spend 28+ hours on a train when a plane ticket is around the same cost and 2 hours.

That's like saying it's crazy not to fill your salad bowl entirely with cheese :)

https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/salad

Besides, we both know it's 2 hours in line just for the TSA check sometimes. I'm very familiar with flying. I've probably logged enough air milage to circle the globe 10 times or more. I despise it. It's nothing like traveling by train. I can board a train in under 5 minutes. I don't even have to have a ticket, I can just decide to go and pay the conductor once I'm on board. Try that on a plane.

Yep done it many times. Even did 24 hours once, with a 3-hour nap in the car at a rest area.

> There's five toilets on each car, you never have to wait.

Can't agree based on personal experience.

> There's free wifi.

That wifi is barely usable. I often ended up using my phone as the hotspot.

> Riding the train is more fun than flying

Depending on whether you are a big train nerd or plane nerd. I am a little bit of both, and I never consider train to be any more fun or boring than flights. On shorter trips where plane flies at a low altitude (e.g. Boston-NYC-Washington DC), if the weather is good, I would be staring at the ground and take (crappy) aerial photos the whole flight.

And your post doesn't mention the routine delays on Amtrak trains. Trains in China and Japan are much more punctuate.

Don't get me wrong, I take trains in the US for leisure purposes more than almost anyone I know, but it is not nearly as romantic as you try to paint, which is why most people choose driving or something else.

>which is why most people choose driving or something else

Most people in the US have never ridden the Amtrak. Not even once in their lives. Source?

https://www.newsweek.com/more-americans-taking-train-ever-pa...

Amtrak set a record in December, the most passengers ever in a year. 32.8 million. If every single one of those rides was a different person instead of repeat riders, that would still be less than 10% of the total US population.

Yet 83% of the population supports more investment in Amtrak.

https://www.masstransitmag.com/rail/press-release/53068546/a...

It doesn't sound like the US population uses cars by choice to me. It sounds like they're forced to use cars, because their area has little or no Amtrak service.

I rode the Amtrak an average of twice a month last year, and the train was delayed/late only once. That's much less frequent than traffic jams I'd say. You waited for a bathroom? Okay, was there a big line or something, because otherwise that's gonna be like 5 minutes at most. It takes far longer than 5 minutes to find an off ramp with a service station and then get back to traveling. When compared to air travel, there is always a line when you need to use it because there's typically only 2 toilets for each cabin section of the plane. And everyone is loaded up on the complimentary beverage at the same time.

Are Japanese passenger trains better? Yes, of course they are. The cars are cleaner, the ride is smoother, train fare is paid with an IC card, platforms are level with the train so you don't need to drag luggage up stairs. I would love to see Amtrak improve to the level of Japan. But I'll still take Amtrak over driving/flying in the US any day.

What's your point? You can list all those things but doesn't change any fact, or how most people travel.

> I rode the Amtrak an average of twice a month last year, and the train was delayed/late only once.

Consider yourself lucky.

https://darienite.com/great-10-hour-new-york-chicago-railroa...

They do Beijing to Shanghai in 5 hours so you have to make New York to Chicago in 4 or it doesn't count.

The numbers are funny. Flying from New York to Chicago takes less than 2 hours but all things considered you lose 8 hours https://www.trippy.com/fly/New-York-City-to-Chicago

You might as well drive it in 12.

> An even more significant improvement would be electrified trains, which can accelerate roughly twice as fast as those with diesel power...

Can someone comment on why this is? My understanding is that the existing diesel trains use diesel generators to power electric motors.

My questions are: 1) Does "electrified" mean pulling power from a third rail? 2) Whatever it means, what makes "electrified" twice as fast as diesel-electric?

> Does "electrified" mean pulling power from a third rail?

Yes, or more precisely either third rail or using overhead lines (catenaries). Overhead lines have many benefits over third rail so they make up the majority of new electrification projects, but third rail still has a lot of use in suburban railways and metro systems.

> Whatever it means, what makes "electrified" twice as fast as diesel-electric?

You're completely right about the engineering, it's just that the diesel generators don't have quite as good peak power output compared to a fully electric system. I think that the article is overplaying this particular benefit of electrification though. The trains that I frequently take are bi-mode, and although you can certainly feel the extra 'kick' of acceleration when you enter the electrified parts of the line, it makes little difference to the total journey time compared to the old diesel-electric trains that used to run on the route.

They mention it only offhand in one sentence, but my understanding of most of the slowness of the US rail network is that it's mostly passenger trains having to let long freight trains pass that eats tons of time.

Nominally, passenger trains have priority and freight trains have to pull into a siding to let them pass, but freight companies made the freight trains longer than the available sidings and so it's the passenger train that gives way in practice most of the time.

Doesn't really matter how fast the train is, or how efficiently it's boarded if it spends excessive amounts of time sitting still waiting for freight to pass.

America's only current, prominent bullet train is CAHSR and the goal of that project is not to speed up passenger rail. The project has nothing whatsoever to do with making existing rail riders happier or incrementally increasing ridership. The avowed purpose of CAHSR is to enable California to grow and prosper without having to build more airports and more freeways. So it's not really worth considering it as a choice between an expensive HSR on the one hand and slightly better Amtrak San Joaquin on the other. Only one of these projects would actually be suited to purpose.

A private company called brightview (I think) built a small section of highish speed rail in Florida and is now building a line from the outskirts of LA to Vegas. I'm excited for it to open up

You have stretched "now building" beyond the bounds of reason. But yes, Brightline has an altogether superior press secretary.

If you tell me when and where, I'll put money down on brightline's completion vs california high speed rail having any functioning sections in the next 10 years

I have absolutely zero faith in california high speed rail doing anything within my lifetime while China can build hundreds of miles in a few years.

It should have followed the 5 and by passed the towns in the Central Valley. The republicans there felt that was a terrible idea and should instead go through where there was much more built out. But stuff would have been built out from the stops, they didn’t need to swing in like that. And so many more landowners as you approach cities and the need to slow down. Such a cluster.

We had a statewide election to decide this. Bypassing Fresno isn't what passed on the ballot. Either the system serves Fresno or the bonds don't exist.

The ballot initiative was all lies. 220mph rail, $50 tickets, Anaheim to SF. La to San Diego in an hour. It was all BS to get votes. And the one thing they stuck to was Fresno? How about forget Fresno, and work on 220mph.

None of those things are in the proposition. The proposition requires design speeds of 200MPH, somewhere in the system. LA to SD in 80 minutes. SF to LA in 160 minutes. Nothing about the ticket prices. You imagined all of that.

Brightline https://www.gobrightline.com/

Never had the chance to use it, but one of the more exciting US rail developments I’ve seen recently.

It’s going to be interesting to see. What they’ve done (as I understand it) is they’ll use common (UP, BNSF) right of way to get up Cajon Pass and out to Barstow.

From there, they’re laying new rail to LV.

The clever part is that they’re laying the rail down the middle of I-15, which is a divided interstate. This lets them built rail to their specifications, a dedicated rail, and also bypass no doubt a huge amount of approvals and things such as environmental studies.

Most of that simply doesn’t apply to the middle of the I-15.

So it’s a bit of a perfect storm that’s enabling this project.

The big question is whether they can get schedule priority getting out of the Inland Empire and over the pass to Barstow. Most passenger traffic is second class on the freight lines (which is where much of the delays and low quality of modern train travel stems from).

But, yea, eager to see this. Supposed to be ready for the ‘28 LA Olympics.

Yeah, using the median is pretty sweet and should hopefully bypass a lot of environment review which is the bane of building anything in CA. Even if it doesn't bypass average car speed, just the comfort of not having to drive that nasty stretch will be a godsend.

My only concern is pricing. It's gonna have to be about 50$ each way to be worth it in my opinion. You can get a flight to a fro for about 150$ and that's out an airport like burbank which is very low security and easy to navigate.

> Supposed to be ready for the ‘28 LA Olympics.

Imagine believing that anyone will be willing to attend the 28 games in America.

$1,000 to a charity of your choice for ANY country you list here that won’t attend if you reciprocate if wrong.

Pretty sure they were talking about tourists/fans from other countries, not athletes representing countries.

People went to the Qatar World Cup as well - it'll happen

Brightline in Florida is awesome. It’s not a short line, it goes from Orlando to Miami which is the same distance as New York to DC. Florida is set up great for it, with a series of pretty dense cities along the coast.

I assumed that “just go faster” wasn’t an available option for Amtrak on existing rails but this article strongly suggests that it is.

Am I having a stroke or did you post this exact comment yesterday

It's the way Hacker News bumps articles to the top (second-chance pool). Everyone's old comments get a new timestamp! (Actually the timestamp stays the same; it's the 'time ago' which is counted differently. Very counterintuitive.)

Stroke diagnosis is fortunately negative :)

Those suggestions would really help, and also, why don't we just _build_ high speed rail?

This is a shining example of the downsides of the financialization of the US economy: the inability to build almost anything at scale.

Really great at owning, not so great at making.

If it were possible, I'm sure Andy Grove would be rolling over in his grave and uttering a ghostly "I told you so..."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Grove#Preference_for_a_...

Time travel is real- take a passenger train in the US in 2025 and you travel back in time to 1985- and no one has cleaned it properly since 1995.

A lot of people seem to be missing that the point of the report is more what we would call "commuter rail", and trying to improve it in the direction of, say, Swiss railways. This is, as a matter of engineering, just very orthogonal to trying to TVG up longer distance Amtrak routes.

Everyone wants to talk about the latter, but really should do both!

Or, y'know, just build a bullet train.

USA. Biggest economy on earth. Most powerful nation. Third largest nation by population. Could maybe build one bullet train, like the 20 other nations that already have them in service, and the 13 other nations that have them in development.

Or just settle for mediocrity. Whatever.

IMO:

The US suffers from the notion of exceptionalism spawned from its position of massive advantage after WWII, as well as a deep seated aversion to mass transit that was borne out of the backlash against desegregation.

I'm probably missing many smaller factors, but I'd be interested to know if someone thinks that I've incorrectly identified those two as major factors.

No, American exceptionalism is not a post-WWII idea. It was core to the expansion of the country in the 19th century.

Not from North America. But I disagree that the exceptionalism started post WWII.

How do you explain the country's ability to perform civil engineering feats prior to WWII. The Erie Canal, Trans-continental Railway, Panama Canal, Brooklyn Bridge, Empire State Building and Golden Gate Bridge spring to mind as feats of engineering that few other country's (if any) could rival. There are obvious examples post WWII (Manhattan project, Apollo program, Interstate highway system), but for all of the USA's pitfalls, they do have an incredible history of civil engineering projects prior to WWII.

The US shifted their focus from domestic to international politics after WWII. They were brought in as arbitrators for world peace, and in a lot of ways, stepped up to the task. Military expansion and spending went through the roof and the Cold War and Vietnam didn't help build public trust in government to do big things at home. Behind the scenes though, politicians could work with other nations to organize the reality that we all live in today in the West. Later, politicians began organising free trade and technology became the next frontier. Why spend hundreds of millions on a bridge when I can send an email instead of a letter? The USA really is a "marvel" in the fact that most of her problems were caused and exacerbated by success and enough competent people in power to keep things moving.

It's hard to discuss the United States without mentioning Trump who believes that undermining the past 100 years of Neoliberalism will bring America back to her "glory days" while completely ignoring the reality on the ground that led from where they were then to where America is today.

So maybe there will be more public works projects in the future for America, but I fear that they will be more focused on appeasing dear leader instead of meaningfully improving the lives of the average American citizen. But until someone turns on the lights and shuts off the music, America will continue to spiral and cry about "unfairness" while her created reality crumbles due to lack of maintenance and care about the subtle realities on the ground that were once central to her rise in the first place.

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