Can you provide sources for the Big Oil conspiracy you cite? Because nationwide high speed rail isn't as easy - or practical - as you think. California hadn't been able to build a train a fraction of that distance without delays and squandering massive amounts of money.
The PNW has been unable to build it from Portland to Vancouver.
The US is many times larger than any European country or Japan. There are US states similar in size to EU countries with comparable rail networks.
The US literally invented air travel, which made traveling long distances by train largely obsolete.
Aircraft aren't limited to where they can go by rails.
So please explain with all these concrete examples of failure how it's a corporate conspiracy and not general purpose government ineptitude?
Japan is almost all mountains, it's one of the worst geographies to build high speed rail where tunnels and turn radii need to be especially large. But they pulled it off anyway. The bullet train initially only connected metros like Tokyo and Osaka but today runs all the way to many remoter areas. The most recently added line connects Fukui prefecture, population 780k.
The US has many areas with suitable population density to be served by high speed rail, and with more accomodative geography than Japan. It's just that in the US, it was considered fine to use government funds and authority to bulldoze land for the interstate system, but not for high speed rail.
> California hadn't been able to build a train a fraction of that distance without delays and squandering[??] massive amounts of money.
It costs money and time to build HSR. Fine. The J(N)R director who ran the shinkansen project literally lied to multiple levels of government to shield the (2x+) budget overruns. He resigned and then within a year of it opening he was given a medal for extraordinary contributions to Japan.
> Because nationwide high speed rail isn't as easy - or practical - as you think.
Who is claiming that it is easy? However, it is practical! It takes 6 hours to drive Tokyo to Osaka; it's 2hr by train. Trains leave every 5 minutes.
A west coast HSR network is just obviously practical! Beijing-Shanghai HSR is 1300km; SF to Seattle would be the same. It'd be 4-5h on a train. Right now it's 2.5 hours on a plane plus a recommended 1.5 hours for security and boarding plus transfers on each side--I'd rather take a high speed train If I could! SF to LA could be ~3h. 90 minutes on a plane plus lead time and transfer times and it's competitive. Again.
> There are US states similar in size to EU countries with comparable rail networks.
>A west coast HSR network is just obviously practical! Beijing-Shanghai HSR is 1300km; SF to Seattle would be the same. It'd be 4-5h on a train. Right now it's 2.5 hours on a plane plus a recommended 1.5 hours for security and boarding plus transfers on each side--I'd rather take a high speed train If I could! SF to LA could be ~3h. 90 minutes on a plane plus lead time and transfer times and it's competitive. Again.
So just to be clear you are saying at best the time difference between flight and HSR would be minimal - so where is the payoff for the billions the infrastructure would take to build. If it's purely capacity couldn't you spend a fraction of the billions you'd spend on the new infrastructure to bolster the existing system?
I think it's relevant that Shanghai and Beijing are 5x the size of SF and Seattle while construction cost are a significant upfront barrier and don't go down much by needing to service fewer travelers.
Can you cite the reasons that these large countries are capable of building high speed rail while the US is not?
Where is the recent innovation in US air travel? It has gotten considerably worse over the last 30 years. Supersonic passenger flights stopped in 2003 around the same time that TSA added hours to every flight.
I don't know which wealthy, western country you live in, but to be clear in the US Acela trains get up to 150 mph (241 kmh) -- admittedly in a short section, but with other sections that have a top speed of 135 mph (217 kmh). The entire route from Washington to New York has an average speed (including stops) of 90mph (140 kmh).
Should Acela be faster? Probably! But people should be clear-eyed about what the reality of the situation is.
That might be the average scheduled speed, but it’s not my average experienced speed on Acela, with about half the trips seeing significant delays from schedule.
As others have pointed out Russia didn't have high-speed rail. The reason is related to the real reason the US doesn't have it. It's of course density. Relevant US cities are much further apart. You practically need hsr to make it practical at all which prevents incremental improvement of the train system. I hear that's different on the east coast (I've spent very little time there) but it certainly sets culture when for most of the country trains are a bad option.
I mean, the recent innovation in US air travel is that the TSA no longer adds hours to every flight. Like, is it maddening that we're curing a self-inflicted problem? Sure, of course it is. But the railfan community is also stuck in 2010. Every flight I've been on in the last 10 years I've walked through a metal detector, not a scanner, I've kept my shoes and belt on, my laptop in my bag. It's like 2000 all over again, except that now we have to pay a nominal fee every 5 years or whatever it is to use PreCheck.
Everyone should be mad that we dug this hole and then climbed out of it, but people shouldn't pretend that we're still in the hole.
Still, we don't put airports in the middle of built-up downtown areas, and for good reason. You usually have to hail a taxi or bus from an airport, whereas you can step out of a (good) train station and be right where you want to be.
There are good transit connections from Logan airport, but you'd still have to board them. I wouldn't want to walk anywhere from the arrivals terminal on foot. Walking out of South Station is pretty nice though, lots of places I'd want to be nearby.
Billy Bishop is pretty convenient, I think it's quite unusual in that respect. But for the same reason, it's rather controversial and limited in the airplanes it can take, and its future is often in doubt.
Train stations and airports are where they are. Lots of them are quite close to downtowns. Others aren't. Nobody's changing their locations in existing large cities.
There are plenty of cities where the nearest airport is closer than the nearest long distance rail station. There are plenty of cities where they aren't.
I tend to show up fairly early because neither myself nor my limo companies like the stress. But the idea that you need to show up hours early just isn't true in general.
The proof is in the profits that result from a favorable and otherwise illogical set of choices. Who even cares about the details? The oil and related industries are notoriously corrupt, introducing lead into gas knowing the toxic effects among other policy choices aimed at reducing alternatives to cars such as: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_consp...
Where's the logical argument against high speed rail that is based on physical limitations of reality and not simply uh its infeasible because policy?
The logical argument is even if you include my time in the airport on both ends it'll still be faster for me to fly from DFW to NYC or LAX than even the fastest trains of Europe, and probably still cost a comparable amount.
If there was HSR between Houston and Dallas, sure I'd take that. Same for Dallas to Kansas City or something similar to that I'd love that. But that's about the distance where even the extra wait and commute time for the airport balances out the fact the plane is going to be flying straighter and faster. In the end I'm not going to take HSR to go to Orlando or Montreal from Dallas, I'm going to fly.
"High-speed rail isn't meant for DFW to NYC distances. "
Why not? Include comfortable, silenced sleeper cabins and I rather take spend a night in a bed and wake up the next morning rested and fresh, than going through the stress of flying.
For long distances like that, planes are faster and cheaper so the market is smaller. Yes, there will be people who prefer the sleeper train, but more people will prefer a shorter, cheaper flight. For distances under 500 miles, trains usually work out faster once you factor in security, travel to and from the airport etc.
So the top destinations out of Dallas are Atlanta, Denver, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Austin, Phoenix, Houston, Orlando, Chicago, and New York.
So HSR would potentially be competitive with maybe two of the top 10 destinations when comparing to air travel for DFW. I'm a proponent for the Texas HSR projects, but I don't think it's going to really radically change how most North Texans travel.
Partially because of the above (only 2 of the top 10 flights), but also because while it'll be nice to just take a train instead of driving to Houston, I'm probably going to have to rent a car or do a lot of ride hailing once I get there. Outside of a small section of a lot of these cities downtown areas you practically need a car to get around or be willing to make a lot of sacrifices.
So I'd love to take HSR to visit family in Clear Lake. I could take DART from my home, HSR to Houston, take METRO to the Bay Area Park and Ride, and then...walk several miles with my family's luggage a few miles on maybe paved sidewalks with a few kids under 3. Ride hailing is pretty much out of the question with little kids, good luck on them having adequate child seats available.
But I'll still champion and argue for the Texas HSR projects, even though I might personally not use it a lot. Maybe transit will improve where I want to go. I hope so. And even then I'll still probably take it to watch a Silver Boot series sometime. But there will be others who will be able to leverage it, and that means fewer cars on the road for me for these trips I'm somewhat forced to choose the car.
But I don't like people acting like there's no logical reason for HSR to be the dominant way for people to travel in the US. As we both agree, trips like DFW-NYC don't make much sense taking a train for most travellers.
Right. HSR isn't meant to replace all long distance travel. European cities still have very busy airports, and just look at the Ryanair route map: https://www.ryanair.com/en/cheap-flight-destinations. HSR would be ideal for DFW, Austin and Houston, where a triangular route would be very competitive, and I'd imagine would have very high passenger numbers and would replace a lot of plane and car journeys.
The traffic from Love Field would be a better target/comparison, as it's a regional airport. European style HSR doesn't replace international hub airports in europe, either.
You think asking someone else to do the research to prove a conspiracy for you is intellectually honest? Do we really need to get caught up in the details of how health insurance is a conspiracy to know that it is a conspiracy? Do conspiracies need to be coordinated to be successful or can they be informal, unspoken, and implied culturally so as to conceal their existence? Isn't worrying about those specific details actually a distraction? There is already proof that there are better systems by their existence world wide. Why don't you do the research to explain why the richest country in the world doesn't have a high speed train system and write a paper on it? Publish it on Arxiv, include physical reasons that it is not possible.
which part of this was intended to convince me of your initial theory further or lead me to think you are more credible than those you are arguing with?
A ton of new destinations? wow what an amazing improvement! Is it possible that was just inevitable network effect and had nothing to do with intentional investments in R/D?
It's almost as if the development of technology and politics are interrelated. Half the cost of building US airports were subsidized by the government when they added them.
Path of development and real estate prices are related to accessibility. Most of the US is not accessible, there are an equal number of paved and unpaved roads in miles. Consider receiving mail in a rural area where it's going to be 3-5 days for an amazon prime package and the closest store is 30+ miles. If you randomly sample locations in the US you'll find that is actually really common, it's just not experienced by many people. Rail networks aren't about going on vacation, it's about developing real national infrastructure that creates efficiencies that boost multiple parts of the economy.
> A ton of new destinations? wow what an amazing improvement! Is it possible that was just inevitable network effect and had nothing to do with intentional investments in R/D?
No, not possible at all.
Intentional investments in R&D led to more fuel-efficient and long-range aircraft technology such as the B787 and A350 which allowed new point-to-point routes between cities that were never before possible, abandoning the hub-and-spoke model of the past.
Like Auckland-NYC nonstop.
Imagine if they had to build rails between those two.
Your airplane facts are offset by your lack of train culture and ignorance of fundamental infrastructure efficiencies that are offered by high speed trains and not airplanes.
The PNW has been unable to build it from Portland to Vancouver.
The US is many times larger than any European country or Japan. There are US states similar in size to EU countries with comparable rail networks.
The US literally invented air travel, which made traveling long distances by train largely obsolete.
Aircraft aren't limited to where they can go by rails.
So please explain with all these concrete examples of failure how it's a corporate conspiracy and not general purpose government ineptitude?