Who says you have to leave your car at the station? The trains could have places to park your car, just like the chunnel or some other trains in Europe. That’d be cool, you wouldn’t have to rent a car at your destination.
See, I think just the opposite. Airlines are completely inconvenient, their on-time reliability is non-existent, and they’ve become a sink-hole for government money.
I’d much rather take a high-speed train from LA to Vegas than have to fly. Plus, I might travel more if I didn’t have to worry about jacked-up last-minute ticket prices.
Why don’t you just plan ahead 3 weeks? Then you don’t have to worry about jacked-up last minute ticket prices. You would already have your ticket. It’s not like they can suddenly charge you more money for the ticket after you’ve bought it.
Anyway, the fact that airlines are inconvenient isn’t true for everyone. In fact, it’s quite convenient for me to fly short distances (200+ miles). Their on-time reliability is just fine. I’ve never been delayed more than an hour, and that was on a cross country flight from DC to LA, which I used to do 6 times a year for about 4 years. I’ve never had a delay going DC to New York on the shuttle flight. And a high speed train would be just as much of a sinkhole as airlines.
A high-speed train would be more expensive for individuals, require just as much upkeep as airlines (I’m guessing), and not get you there either slower or just as quickly. I fail to see any major advantages to a high-speed rail system that would justify major spending for it.
Because the viability of the system is not based on travel from city-center to city-center, but from place to place that people actually want to go to. I (as potential rail customer) don’t care about “Orlando” to “Miami” in theoretical terms … I care about my house on the edge of Orlando to my freind’s house in Little Havana, or the UM campus in Coral Gables, or the 14th street beach, and in chosing rail vs. car, I have to factor in the time, trouble and expense of getting from my “real” destination to the train station.
A much larger percentage of Americans live outside the city center, and that city center is a pain to get to. On a smaller scale, it’s the same reason that mass transit doesn’t exist in the 'burbs – most people would have to walk half a mile to the bus stop, and when you factor that in, it’s not so efficient.
Your post makes it apparent you just do not quite understand the nature of the facts, here.
In Australia, nearly all the population lives in a very thickly populated zone around the edges of the country. I’ve seen population maps of the place - the whole interior is largely empty.
This is simply not true in America. We have large cities all across out interior, and we use more moasts that Australia. Lets see you run rail lines crisscrossing the big wasteland on the interior, then you can talk. Plus, as many posters have pointed out, our land is not unused, and it will not be cheap to buy and build a huge rail network. When they put in the highway network, rail would have been a moronic idea. Now, it may be a theorectically nice idea, but so are personal cold-fusion powered flying pegasi, and rail is simply not cost-effective.
Moreover, Our country has a few things to pay for that Australia does not. We do not like high taxes. The question has never been, “Can we pay for this?”, but “Is it WORTH it to pay for this?”.
Thanks for the geography lesson, but I explained this. Of course we don’t have to service communities in the large expanse of nothing in the centre. But we do have communities that are a long way from anywhere, with not many people that we do have to service. If we can run a train line from Broken Hill to Sydney for about 20 000 people, you guys could run a train line from Indianapolis to Philadelphia via Pittsburgh for about 3 million people.
We mightn’t have to cater for a large expanse of nothing, but we do have to cater for a big expanse of very little. All you guys need is to cater for a big expanse of a lot. I mean, do you have any large cities as isolated as Perth?
Australia, similar to America is one of the lowest-taxed countries in the first world.
You might argue that the US does not have that many big cities, but only three? I feel like there are some computerized models that will tell you where to build rail better than simply taking a map and “reimagining” where they should go.
I don’t think they said, “there are only three”. The article said, “we imagined three”. They left out the blazingly obvious North East corridor, which gets a lot of traffic despite being on twisty inefficient tracks. If there were a way to build straight-ish tracks from Boston to DC, via New York, Philly, and few major outlying entrance points (e.g. Stamford) it would be a huge hit. But purchasing the right-of-way for those tracks, through some of the most expensive real estate in the country, would be prohibitively expensive. Heck, just digging a better tunnel so the train didn’t take an hour from new Rochelle to Penn station would be a huge win.
The California example has been under construction for more than a decade in the Central Valley and connects nothing to nothing, has more than quadrupled in cost, is way delayed beyond the promised schedule, and is hated widely as an expensive boondoggle. Even Governor Newsom pulled support for the project in it’s current form. The “under three hours” claim from Los Angeles to San Francisco is pure fantasy and fails to acknowledge all the stops the train would have to make in every small city the tracks run thru, and the two mountain ranges it would have to cross - it would only be able to reach top speed for a few small portions of the route. Even with everything it takes to fly between these two cities, it’s still a better option than the reality of the high speed rail. On a good day one can fly from any of the three main SF Bay Area airports to any of the several SoCal airports (around 400 miles apart) for around $150 round trip and around 4 hours of total time or less at the airports - air travel nightmares do happen, but they are the exception, not the rule.
There are places where a high-speed train may make sense and AIUI it’s where the two destination cities are about 250 miles or less apart - more than that and flying is always going to be better. High speed rail in other countries works because of the dense population and lack of wide open spaces. I’d rather they had been spending money on improving existing rail for commuters in NorCal and SoCal, as well as freight infrastructure statewide.
Not every train needs to stop at every intermediate station. And train rides are nicer than airplane rides. More spacious aisles and seating, for to purchase if and when you feel like it, and often a pleasant view. And at least in the current environment, you don’t need to arrive at the station an hour early to “check in” and go through security. Arriving 5 minutes in advance works. You can get from the train to someplace else faster, too, because train stations are small enough to build them downtown, unlike airports.
I routinely take the NE corridor even though it takes longer than flying. And if it’s had a straight track, and didn’t follow an old line that twists and turns to go though every little city on the route (must of which it doesn’t stop at) it would be faster than flying from Boston to NY, and competitive from NY to DC, as the station. If it had a nice straight track, it would be overwhelmed with business.
And? All of those routes are not analogous to California, in that they all have higher population density and multiple intermediate large cities. The closest to SF-LA would be Madrid- Barcelona.
The California high speed rail project will stop at all intermediate cities - it was part of the deal to get them on board. Each stop requires slowing down, stopping for a few minutes, and then speeding up again until the next stop. The “3-hour” promise would be for a non-stop and not accounting for the two mountain ranges it would have to cross, not to mention the miles of suburban areas it would have to traverse that would not allow full speed.
I am not against trains, as I ride occasionally, but the CA HSR project has sucked resources that would have been better used in fortifying existing rail IMHO, and has broken every promise initially made.
Would every train needs to make all the intermediate stops? That’s not true on the NE corridor, and there are slow trains that stop at everything and fast trains that only make major stops and faster trains that make fewer stops.
Are you asking if the following statement is untrue or inaccurate?
(Emphasis added.)
Political negotiation opens the door to a lot of questionable choices for the sake of compromise. This feels entirely feasible and completely realistic to me.
As I recall, the US did once have a whole network of long-distance passenger trains - or was that just to Chattanooga😊?
Of course, reinventing one and upping it to high speed would be expensive, but it’s precisely countries with more space (France, Spain ) that have found it beneficial. One of the difficulties is making financial estimates of the wider external benefits to balance against the costs. If electrically powered planes ever got off the ground (so to speak), the balance might be very different.
As for intra-urban and suburban transport, the practicalities would be different, but I’d imagine the answer might be, as in other conurbations, “hub and spoke” - local suburban bus/tram/light rail delivering passengers to intermediate speed limited stop rail services within a metropolis, which in turn can take people to the high speed long distance trains.
No. I’m asking if that deal means that every single train needs to make every stop, or if the deal just required that all those cities get train service out of it. Those are very different requirements.
Amtrak service in Missouri is subsidized by the state as well as federal government. The only way Missouri will fund Amtrak is if there’s service along the routes. That’s why there are stops in Iron County (total population 9,537), Macon County (15,209), Kirkwood (11 miles from the downtown St. Louis station) and Independence (eight miles from Kansas City Union Station). If there’s no service in outstate Missouri, there won’t be any funding.