Map Shows Where 220mph Trains Would Go in the U.S. | Hacker News Reader

Map Shows Where 220mph Trains Would Go in the U.S.

mashable.com

31 pointsrosser70 comments

So there's this puzzle that people enjoy thinking about regarding space travel.

Say that it finally becomes possible to reach a planet of a nearby star. It's a new technology that enables it, and we can build a spaceship that will support several generations of people during the trip. Maybe it takes 500 years to get there.

Well, 500 years is a long time. It's not as if our technological development will stop in the meantime. In fact, given 100 years of development, we might be able to construct a new ship that will only take 300 years to get to that planet. Which would mean it would overtake the first, and beat it by a hundred years.

In which case, why build the first ship at all?

That's the objection I've heard most recently against building high-speed rail in the united states. For instance, in the context of self-driving cars that might be able to organize themselves into "trains" on the road, or fit conditions where they would qualify for a higher speed limit, etc. While it may be true that we need high-speed rail now, is it going to be as true by the time they would actually get built?

But the argument for high-speed rail isn't that it will serve as a stopgap measure until we have self-driving cars, it is that a railroad train is vastly more efficient than any imaginable car technology.

Railroad trains are very energy-efficient, compared to cars driving along a road, or even trucks driving along a road. And if we suddenly had self-driving cars, packed close together and safer than the existing system, trains would still be more efficient.

The link below shows a table of transportation methods and efficiencies -- it shows railroad trains beating even motorcycles for efficiency.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_efficiency_in_transporta...

In addition to your point, high speed rail can also carry cargo as well as passengers.

The reality is not quite that simple, you need to consider the energy required by and environmental impact of building out and maintaining a high speed rail infrastructure. Rail efficiency is also highly sensitive to occupancy, a train carrying a small number of passengers could well be less efficient than transporting that number of people by auto. And cars are getting more fuel efficient as well

And if the government is involved, forget about it. It will be a massive mess of cost overruns and other financial shenanigans. And Amtrak proves that the government can't even run a railroad, let alone build one.

All these criticisms seem to apply equally to roads and bridges

Yup, and rail is much more durable, much less resource-intensive, and has much less of a negative effect on the environment than roads (in typical usage, a single dual-track rail line carries the same number of people as 10-20 lanes of highway)...

The table is missing railroad unions-- the anti-efficiency factor that's ruined American passenger rail.

Amtrak makes good money where there are customers, even with the same unions. It's almost 100% the fault of politicians that won't let Amtrak shut down low passenger volume lines. If we shut down the losers and actually invested the profits from the Northeast Corridor back into that line, you would see great growth.

You know, the way a company would do it.

If we shut down the losers and actually invested the profits from the Northeast Corridor back into that line,

Yglesias wrote up this exact argument this week [1]. The Northeast Corridor profit he dug up [2] amounts to all of $136 million/year for the Northeast Corridor; a proposed upgrade is estimated at $151 billion [3]. (And the profit figure only includes operating costs -- the actually relevant figures aren't available).

[1] http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/03/01/amtrak_profit...

[2] http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/Research/Files/Reports/2013...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_Corridor

The Wikipedia article shows that passenger trains use about 35% less energy per passenger/mile than the average car. If fuel efficiency for cars rose to 40 mpg (less than a Prius), they'd be equivalent.

Self-driving cars wouldn't need the jack-rabbit acceleration and deceleration characteristics that drive sales of US cars, and so would probably be more efficient even without the heroic technology of hybrids. If we ever got to the point of self-driving taxis rather than owning your own car, right-sizing would drive the efficiencies even further - if you're just commuting by yourself, call for a single-occupant tiny car rather than driving an oversized hunk of metal down the road.

Infrastructure technology progresses extremely slowly, in a way I think is hard for people used to the progress in computer technology to understand. Most electricity in the U.S. is still produced by coal power, in plants that usually aren't dramatically more efficient than they were a century ago. 2050 is 37 years from now. 37 years ago was 1976. Most of the transit infrastructure we use today was already built by 1976, down to the physical rail cars used on Amtrak today. On the train line I take to work every morning, they're just now replacing 1970's train cars with ones built in the 2000's.

Holding infrastructure development hostage to starry-eyed visions of what we might have in the future is just foolish. The fundamental building blocks of society--power, water, transit, etc, have been pretty much unchanged since the 1960's. It's unlikely that they will do so in a dramatic way by the time HSR gets built.

I think coal plants are vastly more efficient than they were in 1913 from improvements in materials technology, higher pressures and more efficient combustion.

What we can do (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aved%C3%B8re_Power_Station) vs what we do most of the time are two different things.

Avedøre shows we can do 91% thermal and 49% electrical efficiency if we set our minds to it. But the fact is that most plants don't do better than 33% at both (because they're not that efficient and because they throw out all the heat).

"Vastly" is a relative term. See: http://www.netl.doe.gov/technologies/coalpower/refshelf/role... page 10.

Focus on the chart showing tons of greenhouse gas emissions per megawatt-hour. 1913 was still in a period of rapid technological development, but the curve necks around 1930. From 1930 to 2000, GHG emissions per megawatt hour dropped from around 1.5 tons/MWh to 1.0 tons/MWh.

This is what technological progress looks like. You have periods of rapid improvement followed by a plateau with extremely gradual improvements.

37 years prior to 1976 was 1939, when none of the interstate highway system was built. By 1976, it was largely in place as we know it today.

Infrastructure does not always move slowly. When it's time, it actually moves quite quickly.

It seems we were relatively richer then though. The Stockholm subway and train infrastructure, with hundreds of stations, was built in this period with miles and miles of tunnels, and several dozen underground station. Today we have to go trough hell and high water for a two station tunnel extension. My dad worked a builder, rebuilding the core of the city centre those days. The bonus from 2-3 months work bought him a new car. Try that today. It seems two to three decades after the second world war for countres that wasn't devastated by the war was a really strong growth period.

That's because americans drag their feet. Look at what happened to ShangHai in 20 years: http://www.businessinsider.com/shanghai-1990-vs-2010-2010-6

Or Dubai in 17: http://www.ebaumsworld.com/pictures/view/187773/

Or (in the US): South (new) Las Vegas: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=37228

Or take the 1994 LA Earthquake where the freeways were repaired 2.5 months early: http://articles.latimes.com/1994-04-06/news/mn-42778_1_santa...

Or you can even go 150 years back to when the London Sewage System was built, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_sewerage_system in a matter of a few years

Or Chongqing: http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/showthread.php?t=172962 ... their rivers glisten brown with progress (I guess)

Or take the Chinese High Speed Rail which went from 0 KM in 2007 to 9300 KM in 2012.

Or take the German Autobahn which went from 108 KM to 3736 KM between 1935 and 1940.

The infrastructure debt in the US is huge and it gets harder and harder every year to catch up. The idea that self driving cars, as some seem to argue below this post, will somehow solve this infra debt is IMHO just plain uninformed. The Economist sets the underinvestment at $94 billion / year.

If the US doesn't sort this out it will have a significant impact in growth in the future. You can maybe see some of the effects of this already in the faster moving Internet infrastructure.

That could be because the attention in the US has been focused on the computer and medical revolutions, not in heavy machinery and infrastructure. If you look at the US from 1946-1960, the whole face of society changed as the interstate highway system was built, car ownership extended to the masses, people moved out to the suburbs, tractor-trailers enabled nationwide networks of retail chains, and quick jet travel between cities became practical.

These things run in cycles. The fact that infrastructure hasn't changed much since 1970 doesn't mean that infrastructure takes forever to change, it means that attention has been elsewhere since then.

Coincidentally, the modern conservative movement was born in the 60s with Goldwater and took hold in the 70s and 80s with Reagan.

There is always some amount of risk that a new technology will make all your investment worthless. The most extant example of this is the US telephone system: billions invested to have a copper wire in every home which is pretty much useless now (and appears to be a reason why US operators charge such high rates). Countries like India and many African states are bypassing this investment in infrastructure by going directly with mobile phones. Does that mean that the US should not have invested all that money? No! The system was very useful while it lasted; there was a demand which it satisfied. It made its owner ATT immensely profitable, and gave it enough legroom to start a research lab where eccentric geniuses could hack away on projects that would be so much more useful than what anyone could have ever imagined

High speed Internet access whether DSL, cable, or ethernet requires "a copper wire in every home" [ok, fiber requires a glass wire, but it's still the same concept].

Why do you say copper wire is useles?

The wires that were run for telephones aren't always appropriate for high-speed usage. When you have to design for lowest common denominator this becomes a real burden.

Are these self-driving cars expected to organize themselves into 'trains' that go 220mph or am I missing something?

Also, w.r.t. the spaceship, what happens if the time between the tech for spaceship #1 and the tech for spaceship #2 includes an extinction-level event? Why build spaceship #2 when we can just wait another couple hundred years and assume that obviously we will improve it even more?

Why buy a new computer when it will be obsolete within a couple of months? I should just never buy a new computer and then I will never have to worry about it being obsolete!

The fuel efficiency of a vehicle rolling on rigid steel wheels on a rigid steel track is FAR higher than that of a vehicle rolling on pneumatic tires on asphalt.

The number I have seen quoted is that a train can move 1 ton 400 miles using 1 gallon of diesel.

That is an incredible number - I'd love to see a citation.

Yep. https://www.google.com/search?q=train+fuel+efficiency+400+mi...

One of them: http://www.ctls.uconn.edu/do-csx-trains-really-move-1-ton-of...

I think that now, perhaps more than ever, America and Americans would benefit from domestic high-speed rail.

As someone who travels occasionally--albeit somewhat infrequently--for both business and pleasure, I share the opinion that flying is not altogether pleasant. From arriving at the airport several hours early, to dealing with TSA, to sitting in the cramped aircraft seating, it's not a stretch to say that it's a somewhat miserable experience. For the amount of money one has to pay for a flight, especially if going to a less popular/metropolitan destination, the experience is very sub par.

Trains, however, are a joy to ride. There is no TSA (or any other form of security theatre), no having to show up several hours early, and the journey itself is pleasant while watching the world pass by outside. Delays are very infrequent. I've personally done some of my best thinking, coding, and writing while on a train.

There is, however, one major problem: trains in America are slow. Slow to the point that driving through Los Angeles (including traffic delays) is still about twice as fast as taking the Amtrak. There is probably some efficiency gain on longer trips, but who wants to sign up for a 72-hour train ride that could easily be a 36-hour drive or, more realistically, a two hour flight for the same cost?

I would welcome a revitalization of the rail industry in this country with open arms, but only if they do it right; after all, as a project that would likely be subsidized with tax dollars, I'd rather not pay for something that one one would use.

Do you not think that a major government initiative in HSR (which it would require, tax dollars or not) wouldn't come with the standard TSA security theater in tow?

Probably not -- they know full well that people take trains to avoid the TSA and that they would have substantially reduced ticket revenue if they put people through that nonsense.

I think there will certainly be a measure of security with such a system, but it wouldn't need to be at the level of air travel. The danger of someone hijacking a train is finite - it has a definite path and that pathway can be planned to avoid Problem X or Problem Y. That's very unlike a commercial jet.

hijacking a train is a lot less dangerous than a plane.

We don't put the TSA at the entrance of public parks either

> the journey itself is pleasant while watching the world pass by outside

Unless high-speed rail becomes successful enough to become a real option, in which case they'll be economically forced to pack customers in like the economy class on modern airliners, if not tighter, to maximize revenue.

> as a project that would likely be subsidized with tax dollars

... it's going to have to wait for enough of the Tea Party to die off before it's politically viable, and by 'Tea Party' I mean anyone who is primarily concerned whether every single cent the government spends can be justified through a purely Originalist reading of the Constitution unless the money is going to fund the military and/or the police.

> Unless high-speed rail becomes successful enough to become a real option, in which case they'll be economically forced to pack customers in like the economy class on modern airliners, if not tighter, to maximize revenue.

I traveled extensively via Europe's high-speed rail network during the summer of 2012. If you didn't know already, rail service has been the primary mode of transport for long-distance trips in Europe for several decades. The coaches are still luxurious compared with airplane seating, and I could recline fully and get up to go purchase some snacks or a meal.

The thing with trains is that they are not space- or weight-limited like airframes. It is much easier to tack on a couple of extra cars for heavily-trafficked lines than to pack people in like sardines, and it makes economic sense to keep train coaches comfortable if you are advertising yourself as the luxurious alternative to air travel. Given the European and Asian models, I don't see evidence that rail services will be forced to cut comfort like we have seen with the airlines.

The new high speed rail line between San Francisco and Los Angeles is projected to cost $68 billion. Atlanta built a new international airport terminal for $1.4 billion. I'd think at those prices we could fix the TSA delays between LAX and SFO for less money than building a high speed rail line to link them.

Hilarious comparison with the self-driving cars. The whole POINT of a train is you arrive in an actual PLACE. Not some god-forshaken dump surrounded by parking lots.

In 2011 I was in Zurich during "street parade" which is one of those crazy european things where lots of people gather to dance to awful music. Anyway, the attendance was nearly a million. Substantially all of these million people arrived by train in the six hours before noon on the day of the event. I was flabbergasted watching these people pour out of the rail station by the thousand. This is totally impossibile by road.

The contest between trains and cars is not about the way people get around. It is about the way they live when they are not moving. Trains enable the kinds of cities people want to visit. Cars hollow out and destroy cities.

I don't know if the self-driving car would survive your "street parade", but at least they can drop you off and then leave the city to park somewhere else until you need them again.

Historically I have been a big supporter of trains in the US. Recently, I have decided that the cost may not be worth the benefit if future technology is considered.

The future is going to involve self driving busses, self driving cars, self driving trucks etc.

The primary thing I enjoy about the train is the additional space. Fundmantally, that is the problem with trains too. If they jammed people on a train the way they jam them on a bus, it should drive the profits up. Amtrak sells out a lot of routes in the north east while competing with $20 bus tickets.

In 20 years, self driving busses should replace trains as the up front cost is lower and the market is freer.

I'd argue that any money considered spent on trains should be put to better use.

(Added)

I think it is safe to assume all vehicles will run on electric and batteries in the distant future, further reducing train advantages.

Trains are substantially more efficient to move freight. I don't think that self driving trucks will be able to compete insofar as bulk movement of freight goes.

The freight rail system in the US is actually pretty good, and virtually all freight doesn't need bullet-train speed.

In 2030-2050, passenger rail will be obsolete. Self-driving cars will surpass them on every metric. After AI* obsoletes physical safety as an engineering problem, cars will shrink to tiny, weightless pieces of plastic most closely approximating today's motorcycles. And following Jevon's paradox, the massive efficiency gains will push economic driving to extreme speeds. As fast as bullet trains, without the timetables.

*AI from 2013's POV; in 2030 it will be just another dumb algorithm

The idea that in 20 years we'll have self-driving cars on any substantial scale is totally ridiculous. If I had to bet money, we won't even have a substantial electric car deployment by then, much less self-driving cars.

Also: the physics of high-speed cars makes the concept of cars traveling as fast as bullet trains totally ridiculous. The fact that a car is self-driving doesn't change the physics of tire/road friction.

Friction losses aren't significant. These cars are limited by aerodynamic drag power -- this scales as speed^3, and dominates all other losses.

Friction losses aren't significant. These cars are limited by aerodynamic drag power -- this scales as speed^3, and dominates all other losses.

No.

"Of the energy output of fuel in a car engine, 33% is spent in exhaust, 29% in cooling and 38% in mechanical energy, of which friction losses account for 33% and air resistance for 5%. By comparison, an electric car has only half the friction loss of that of a car with a conventional internal combustion engine."

So, meh, even if magic self-driving cars had zero air resistance, they're only 5% more efficient than non-self-driving cars.

These cars are limited by aerodynamic drag power...

I mean future self-driving cars travelling at bullet-train speeds. For these, losses are dominated by drag.

I won't argue that 2030 will be the magic year, but self-driving is a far greater incentive for most people than being electric powered.

You'll get both, because they're complementary. Self-driving cars will cut the economic cost of electric vehicles: autotaxis will replace private ownership, and their high upfront costs will be split between many users [1]. Conversely, self-driving cars will push performance envelopes, so the EV's enormous efficiency advantage will be desirable.

[1] The economics DO NOT work this way yet, because batteries degrade too quickly (Tesla is what, 500 charge-discharge cycles?). Heavier use means proportionally shorter life; no advantage. Solve battery life, and you've solved economics.

Yeah, you have to come up with external reasons (NB: they aren't necessarily bad reasons) to want an electric car. But self-driving cars have very obvious advantages that you don't need to explain anything about climate change or geopolitics to want.

I could reclaim about $1000 a week in billable time with a self-driving car (if I billed hourly, which I don't, but I think you get my point).

We'll certainly have electric cars on a substantial scale by 2033, and it's likely we'll have self-driving cars deployed in some significant contexts (long distance freeway travel) by then.

Social forces will drive the former, economic forces will drive the latter.

The auto industry is saying that fully self-driving cars will be on the market in ten years. The safety and entertainment benefits are enormous. Bullet trains require an entirely new track infrastructure, whereas self driving cars are an obvious upgrade to the existing auto infrastructure (which is already 1000x more popular than rail).

It's fun to look at, but the trip from LA to New York would be about 13 hours -- and that's ignoring the time stopped at stations and assuming you can go 220mph the entire trip.

New York to some other city would be even worse. For example, New York to Seattle and you're approaching something like 20 hours.

I really love trains for short trips (NY to DC), but I just don't see the actual demand these long distance lines. Maybe we should just try and fix airport security and intra-urban mass transit instead.

I'd take a high speed if it was cheaper than flying and didn't require all the security.

We could solve the security problem with the stroke of a pen - just abolish the TSA. It is a horrendous waste of money, a ludicrously expensive tax on our time that we choose to pay out of pure paranoia. Is it really worth building an entire hugely slower alternate infrastructure to avoid this tax, when we could just opt to stop paying it?

Contrariwise, if we are that committed to TSA, whatever brain-dead political calculation forced us to waste an extra hour in the airport before every flight would almost certainly cause us to do the same before every train trip.

This is from a few weeks ago and is basically one guy's fantasy based on not much facts. The real current plans are much more about small regional networks that connect places people want to go rather than rail geek porn that just connects everything because it looks nicer on the map.

I'm all for a HSR system and I think it sounds AWESOME, but I have doubts if it would ever catch on.

HSR would have to compete with the current airline system. If it's cheaper, more convenient to ride, and the time required to travel is comparable to airline, it could catch on, but as it stands I'm unsure if there's enough room for it to survive while competing against the airline system.

Commercial airlines travel at around 500-600 miles per hour, so if a HSR system is able to reach 220mph, then the plane will get you there about ~2.5x as fast. Of course. People consider their time to be valuable, so if you need to get somewhere quick, you'd likely just take the airplane, unless you're traveling somewhat nearby (like San Francisco to Los Angeles). It would appeal to most people not having to deal with the TSA, but there's no guarantee TSA wouldn't decide that it's their duty to "protect" (terrorize) the people in the HSR system as well.

Somebody please write me a message to convince me my message is nonsense and that a HSR system is a great idea.

I agree with your reasoning but it's a bit deeper than "airplanes are 2x the speed of trains so therefore they are faster", and not just because airplanes fly a lot of extra distance for ATC reasons.

At major city airports you easily lose 2 hours with security, taxing around the airport in the airplane doing 5 mph, and boarding/deplaning. Not to mention any weather delays, and good luck if you have luggage.

Plus, most airports are not that close to the city center. Most train stations in the city center. I'm most familiar with NYC, but I can walk from my office to 3 train stations (Penn Station, PATH, Grand Central) in less than 15 minutes. The 3 airports are all an hour in a subway or 30 minutes in a $50 cab ride away. The airports are also more subject to traffic. The last time I flew to Florida from NYC, I spent more time on the ground getting to JFK, waiting to get on the plane, and waiting to take off to NYC than in the air.

With all that said, 200-300 mile trips make a lot of sense by train. Boston->NYC, NYC->DC by train make a lot more sense than airplanes even in the best weather. When the planes get slowed down by bad weather, forget it. Even Boston->DC by train makes a lot of sense, even today with our relatively crappy high speed rail.

I imagine a train up and down the east coast of florida, or the California coast with slightly better technology would do similiarly well.

But a train from NYC to Chicago or Denver makes no sense. And definitely not for NYC to LA. As soon as the portion of the flight cruising increases beyond an hour or two, it just kills a train.

Making Chicago a hub would be a nightmare. The city is already home to the worst highway gridlock in the US.

The hub should be shifted further west to help create another metro area, not to just add to an existing one that happens to also be very corrupt.

Does anyone else see something wrong with Chicago being the central hub (specifically regarding our president's past history in Chicago)? Sure, it's not exactly like it would have been if Bush (W) proposed a large rail hub in Crawford, but Chicago isn't exactly the only choice for such a hub either. In fact, why not avoid a large hub?

The best choice for a hub is someplace that large numbers of people would use as their destination. Chicago fits the bill much better than anywhere else in the middle of the country. There's a reason O'Hare is one of the busiest airports in the nation.

Isn't Chicago already the big rail hub for Amtrak? I think all the East to West traffic in the Northern half of the country goes through there.

First we need to fix regular passenger rail in this country. As long as interstate passenger rail is controlled by the Amtrak monopoly, and its attendant unions, rail travel in America will continue to fall behind the rest of the world. There's not even regular rail service between most major US cities 3-8 hours apart, even though tracks exist and demand would exist if trains ran as fast as driving.

Freight is a big problem. They own the rails; Amtrak is a guest.

That's only partially true-- Amtrak owns the Northeast corridor. Amtrak's only innovation in forty years (!) on the NEC is Acela, a "high speed" offering that is marginally faster than regular service (shorter times mainly because Acela makes fewer stops) and is more expensive than private air shuttle travel along the same routes.

Ah yes, I've heard of that train. It doesn't go any faster than 100mph does it?

Acela goes up to 150mph. Even the Pittsburgh-Philly Keystone Line breaks 100mph.

That's not too shabby at all.

Speed is an issue: I live 70 miles north of Wall Street and for a while worked a block away from the actual Wall Street. I found that at any time except the worst of the rush hours, I could go door to door by car faster than by the Metro train. Net, the trains were not very fast. The main problem was, the trains have to stop and start so often.

It looks a lot like the Ticket to Ride board http://nightmaremode.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/ticket1....

At least in the US, the history of rail and high speed rail is clear: Even if you build it for free, during operations it fails (A) to show a profit or (B) to pass the laws on 'cost/benefit' analysis on the needed subsidies. So, in simple terms, in the US, passenger trains are non-starters.

Or, at one time the US had one heck of a passenger train system: Could get a train from tiny town A and travel to tiny town B for nearly any two tiny towns A and B in the country. But as soon as the Model T came out, people rushed to buy them and use them in place of the trains, in spite of the fact that the roads were awful.

Since then the cars and roads have gotten much better. For short trips, train technology is not much better than 100 years ago when it started losing out to the Model T and has no chance now.

For long trips, we have airplanes.

Look, we could have 'high speed' ships to cross the Atlantic, too. And the last of the great Atlantic ships were fantastic. Alas, people didn't like them, needed all the luxury just to put up with the uncomfortable aspects of travel by ship, and, really, were eager just to get where they were going. So, when Boeing sold their 707 jets for crossing the Atlantic, the 707 jets quickly 'sunk' essentially all the passenger ships.

The Boeing 707 had some serious 'engineering-economic' advantages: (A) It was much lighter than a ship, no doubt much lighter per person carried so that are moving much less dead weight across the Atlantic. (B) It could make a round trip while a ship was at dock loading. (C) Net, per month, a Boeing 707 could carry enough passengers across the Atlantic to compete with a ship, for less money and much less time per passenger. That sank the ship.

For another detail, look at the map in the OP: The trains go long distances, commonly across a whole state, without stopping. E.g., in Tennessee, the trains stop in Nashville and Memphis, but between Memphis and Kentucky is about 100 miles that the trains bypass. So, for all those people bypassed, how will the train serve them? Yes, I saw the plan of a 'tram' that catches up with the high speed, non-stop train, 'couples up' side by side, does a transfer of people and baggage, 'decouples', and slows down. Still I expect that mostly the plan would be that people in the 100 miles from Memphis to Kentucky would have to drive a car, ride a bus, or take a slow train to reach Memphis. Now we are back to the old problems of handling luggage and making connections: That's why the train terminals were so big -- to have space for people waiting for connecting trains. Besides, passenger trains are vulnerable to Big Sis at the DHS and her TSA gang. A lot of people would rather walk than face the TSA; to drive a car 1000 miles to avoid the TSA is a great pleasure.

Net, for short to medium distances, say, 1000 miles or less, just drive a car and, then, have all the luggage in the car during the trip, all under own control for the whole trip, and have the car at the destination. For longer trips, take a plane as now.

Heck, there's a chance that modern blimps -- lighter than air craft -- could beat passenger trains.

Yes, I know: Maybe there are some lawyers who want to live in Manhattan, have their offices near Grand Central, take a fast moving train to DC, take a cab to Capitol Hill for the day, and reverse the process and be home for dinner early in the evening. Fine for people earning big bucks with an office near a train station and wanting to work at another office near another train station at most only a few hundred miles away. Sorry 'bout those people. For all the rest of us, we shouldn't pay subsidies for those few big bucks lawyers. Besides, have they heard of video conferencing?

My main objection to passenger trains is that they want to use publicity efforts such as the OP to build political support to tax people to pay subsidies for the trains. That is, the effort is to get into my checkbook. No thanks.

If they want to build the trains with capital raised privately, fine with me. If they wanted to proceed with private capital, then we wouldn't see publicity efforts such as the OP.

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