Apart from … you can? It’s possible to travel between pretty much any two towns in Europe by rail. If the desire took me, I could travel from my minor town in the north of England all the way to Turkey (albeit with a few changes).
Your argument seems nonsensical. Surely the architect who did it the ‘smart way’ would also find that his ‘market driven’ pavement planting would be just as obsolete, if ‘all it takes is for a popular class to open in a certain building’?
pdts
In fact, I have travelled from Oxford to Shanghai by rail and then on (via ferry and more rail) to Tokyo.
But yes, a few changes!
pdts
Let’s be realistic about costs here. Let’s also focus on the primary revenue stream for airlines and long commutes, which is for business purposes, not tourism and travel.
Until the price of an airline ticket becomes prohibitive, this will never catch on. Until rail can offer you both a cheaper alternative to flight or a long drive AND a relative time savings, it won’t catch on.
If we can develop a train that can travel at 500mph, then I’m on board. Until then, I’m not, nor will anyone else be.
It just isn’t feasable, not even now in light of rising fuel prices. Too many logistic obstacles, too much money, too many people lobbying for a stop in their hometown, etc.
And to the OP that tries to dismiss the “size of America” issue: you can’t dismiss it, because it IS the issue.
Countries like Japan and those in Europe that enjoy these HSR systems can do so because they are the size of Oregon, not a land mass fifty or more times that.
I would LOVE if we had HSR all over America, as my experience with the European version was such that it was economical, environmentally friendly and almost ALWAYS on time.
But you simply cannot handwave the sheer size of America away, nor can you force something that costs this much down Americans throats when economically viable options that are actually cheaper and faster currently exist.
What we really need to do is figure out a way to power airplanes with something other than petroleum, then this rail issue will go away.
But how does the ‘size of America’ argument mitigate against local (Oregon-sized, maybe?) HSR systems, starting in the west and east, perhaps to be linked later?
After all, Europe is pretty huge - a respectable fraction of the size of America, and that has lots of HSR.
pdts
What do you think is a more reasonable cost estimate, and why?
High speed rail has many advantages for business travel, most notably reliability and proximity of terminals to city centers. It can’t compete with airlines for trans-continental business travel, but trains are more convenient for regional inter-city travel, which is what this thread has been about.
What logistical obstacles are you referring to?
Japan is about the size of California. Do you know what else is the size of California? California, that’s what. And the entire East Coast area. There is a considerable amount of travel (both business and pleasure) within each of these Japan-sized areas, which could be done by rail instead.
…And yet another imponderable. Maybe three hours to San Francisco with a decent dining car is somewhat different than an hour by plane, then looking around in a possibly unfamiliar neighborhood for somewhere to eat. (Do they have dining cars on HSR?)
Not saying that the food on the train is always better than the restaurants in, say, the airport or local hotels (no cite possible for such a sweeping generalization), just that there are things you can do while on the train that should take some edge off of the ‘excessive travel time’ argument.
Conceded. But this isn’t about California alone, but a national prospect, and while a huge part of me wants this type of transportation, it doesn’t mean we should, could or would have it at the expense of what we have now.
There’s also the “check in 1 hour before departure” business with airliners. On any civilized train system, if you arrive at the train station 5 minutes before departure with ticket in hand (or 10 minutes before departure without ticket), you’d easily make it onto the train.
The Japanese Shinkansen used to have dining cars, but not anymore. They still have vendors on the trains who sell pretty good boxed meals (and beer). Though usually I’d try to buy food at the station before boarding the train because of the wider selection available.
And yet…we don’t seem to have HSR here in the US. Why? If it makes so much sense then why isn’t anyone doing it? Afaik there isn’t even a serious proposal to do it any time in the near future.
Where is the big demand for commuter or personal rail traffic in the US? If there isn’t a need (which seems pretty obvious), then why should we foot the bill for a several billion dollar system? And if there is a need…why isn’t it being fulfilled already?
The answer is up thread in the advocates who concede that such a system would operate at a loss.
Why isn’t there a rail system in California meeting this supposed demand then? Seems like there should be…if in fact there is a large demand for such a system. And California COULD afford one…if there was a need for one.
Again, afaik there have been several groups looking into doing this…yet, no HSR system has materialized. Why?
-XT
There are numerous things that make sense but Americans refuse to adopt - public transportation, universal medical care, metric system, etc, etc. I don’t pretend to understand the reasoning behind each one, but they usually seem to do with conservatism (in the sense of the “we’ve been doing fine without it” attitude), uniquely strong aversion to “big government” and high taxes, etc.
If that were the reason, we wouldn’t have a government-funded highway system either.
I think it has to do with cost more than anything. A HSR system at this point would be very expensive…and no one wants to foot the bill for something that there is so much uncertainty about it’s use.
Well…no. Much of the highway infrastructure was originally built as part of an effort to provide military logistics. Once it was in place it was simply expanded on. Sort of like the current air infrastructure. We have it now, so it makes sense to expand and enhance (and maintain). If we were looking at building the current infrastructure from scratch my guess is people wouldn’t go for it any more than they are going for HSR…why would we want to spend that kind of money on something that is essence redundant? We already HAVE the road and air infrastructure after all…so, it’s a matter of simply maintaining or expanding it. HSR however is a whole NEW infrastructure that not only would need to be built essentially from scratch but then would be in the same cycle of maintain and enhance…and there is the question of if after spending all that money if enough people would actually use it to make it worth while. Perhaps they would (I certainly would LOVE to travel by HSR throughout the US)…but then again, perhaps they wouldn’t. Seems like a huge if to hang billions on…and looks like most people agree, since we aren’t really seeing serious proposals to put something like that in on the scale of the OP.
-XT
Perhaps your north-south rail corridors could be viable if the corresponding airline routes are discontinued.
How would you get the airlines to discontinue those lines? How would you convince people to pay billions of dollars to build up a new transit infrastructure that would essentially be redundant with what they currently have…and then take the choice away from them and force them to use the new system?
-XT
It seems to me that your argument boils down to “we don’t have it because we don’t need it; and we must not need it because we don’t have it.” By that rationale, would anything ever get built?
The point of this is not to eliminate the competition and force people to use high-speed rail. This has to be designed to meet people’s needs. It has to attract users by offering something better than what they have now. Short, high-density air service would be reduced as a consequence of high-speed rail travel, not as a stimulus to it.
There’s one aspect of american geography that bodes against this, and that no one has brought up yet. From Boston to New York, city-center to city-center, the Acela is competitive, in time and price, with flying. Boston and New York are almost unique among american cities in that lots of people live in the city. For most of the residents, it’s probably easier to get to South Station or Penn Station than it is to get to Logan or LaGuardia airports. Europe is much the same way; don’t know about Japan. But there are many places in the U.S. where that’s not true. Getting to a downtown train station may be less convenient than getting to the airport. It’s not the sprawl of the country we need to consider, it’s the sprawl of our cities.
I got to Gare du Nord about 30 seconds before my train was due to leave and I still caught it. Among my hectic travels, it is the crowning achievement. I don’t plan to ever cut it that close again, though.
I’d envision a more Organic change: all ‘airline’ tickets between Paris and Brussels are tickets for the Thalys HSR.
Of course, there is room for both: Tokyo/Osaka does fairly brisk airline trade, too.
pdts
It boils down that way if you limit yourself to reading that one paragraph. My argument, such as it is, boils down to something like this: We don’t need it because it’s redundant, and we don’t have it because it’s expensive.
This is opposed to the strawman argument on the other side which boils down to something like: We need it because we don’t have it and we should get it in case someone wants to use it.
ehe?
-XT
I don’t know about the rest of the country, but MetroNorth ridership is through the roof here already. In fact the state just bought a bunch of new cars and is building an expensive maintenance facility in New Haven.
Well, here for a start. To summarize:
I just looked up the travel times, and Acela makes it from Boston to New York in about 3 and a half hours. The flight from Logan to LaGuardia takes about an hour and ten minutes. Considering lines at security, the time it takes to get from the city to the airport, etc., I’d say yeah, the convenience of Acela vs. plane is probably about even.
Now, if we invested in a HSR between the two cities, maybe travel time would be cut to what - two and a half hours, or thereabouts? (Let’s keep in mind the train still has to make stops.) Clearly a HSR would be more convenient for many travelers than a plane would be, if prices held steady.
What I question is that for this 300 mile trip, how many billions is it worth spending to save people about an hour of travel time? I’m generally a supporter of mass transit, and I’d say this is probably the best candidate for a HSR link that would be extensively used, but really, how much money are we actually talking about here?
If we’re really talking about tens of billions of dollars to link two cities with HSR, then I have to say that the priority ought to be investing in new, clean energy technologies first. I think sinking billions into fuel cells, switchgrass, or Mr. Fusion clean energy sources will benefit the whole country in a lot better ways than would making travel more convenient for the people of Boston and New York.