Thread 2049428

Why are trainheads so obsessed with the arbitrary distinction of "high speed rail"?
Especially in America where we barely have any passenger rail in the first place. Sure it would be nice to have trains that go fast, but wouldn't you rather first have any trains at all? Insisting that all new passenger rail be "high speed" just makes it exponentially more expensive to build and less likely that anything will ever happen. See picrel.

>>2049428 (OP)
>but wouldn't you rather first have any trains at all?
We do. And they're useless for getting places unless you live along the NEC. We don't really have a use for more Amtrak trains that don't even beat freeway trip times.

>>2049429
In the northeast it would make perfect sense to gradually upgrade the already existing rail network to high speed, like what's happened in Japan and Western Europe.
In other places where that infrastructure doesn't exist, it's silly to obsess over these kinds of details. The Brightline in Florida has been a massive success because they didn't give a damn about being "high speed" and just focused on making the rail network actually exist.

>>2049428 (OP)
Did you really need to make a second thread for this?

>>2049432
>like what's happened in...Europe
Thanks anon I needed a good laugh

>>2049435
Even more credence to my point.

>>2049428 (OP)
it's not the trainheads, it's the "urbanists" who are obsessed. hsr only good for short routes in countries that don't heavily restrict their airspace. tokyo to kyushu or hokkaido? yeah I'm flying that every time. beijing to guangzhou? fly that. commuter/intercity trains are far better uses of infrastructure money and actually possible to build politically in america (see amtrak midwest expansions and track speed upgrades, brightline, la metro, Sonoma marin, caltrain electrification, Dallas, cta rpm) , and sleeper trains are better option for long distance in china being half the cost and not wasting your daylight. and already if you live near 30th st, you can commute to midtown on the acela faster than some in Brooklyn and Queens, so that's one use I can see, but haters will say that's not hsr. would be nice if tokyo had 100mph+ commuter trains like marc, septa, njt, amtrak do, hell even metra hits 79mph coming into the city. I'd live further out if the "express" could go faster than 62mph

>>2049438
There's some truth to this as well. California is home to many, many municipal airports. You have LAX, Long Beach, John Wayne, Fullerton, Hawthorne, Torrence, Santa Monica, Ontario, Riverside, Corona etc and that's all within the same metropolitan area

>>2049438
The first person to build a sleeper train that goes from Penn Station to Orlando is going to drown in money.
There is so much air traffic between the tri-state and Florida and everyone hates going to Newark/JFK.
They could call it the Nightline.

>>2049428 (OP)
At this point in the US as long as we get rail that's faster than interstate speed and able to operate in a timely manner, it will be an improvement. Anything to mitigate the car problem.

>>2049432
>In the northeast it would make perfect sense to gradually upgrade the already existing rail network to high speed,
They've been doing that piecemeal since the 80s

>In other places where that infrastructure doesn't exist, it's silly to obsess over these kinds of details.
A train that takes me somewhere and isn't frequent or reliable (pretty much all Amtrak service outside of the NEC) is useless

>they didn't give a damn about being "high speed" and just focused on making the rail network actually exist.
Then why is Brightline West intent on HSR?

>>2049440
Most people are going to continue to fly to Florida from NYC because spending 2 hours on a plane is just a better use of vacation time than 24 hours on a train. People might ride such a train but it's not going to make a dent in the demand for air travel.

>>2049440
Sadly the predatory auto/airline hegemony will try to do everything to shoot it down before it even starts. I'm hoping for the best though.

>>2049444
>A train that takes me somewhere and isn't frequent or reliable
So? Who said you can't have frequent and reliable rail at more traditional speeds?
>(pretty much all Amtrak service outside of the NEC) is useless
Would making the trains go faster magically want to make people use them more? You're never going to build a train that's faster than a plane. There's no point in taking the train anywhere if you're just going to have to rent a care once you get off.
>Then why is Brightline West intent on HSR?
My guess? To hype up investors. It will definitely help that it's just going to be a straight line through the desert and doesn't have to worry about being part of a larger rail network. But I still have my reservations. It's already impossible to build anything on the west coast, they're not making things any easier on themselves.

>>2049444
>A train that takes me somewhere and isn't frequent or reliable
So? Who said you can't have frequent and reliable rail at more traditional speeds?
>(pretty much all Amtrak service outside of the NEC) is useless
Would making the trains go faster magically make people use them more? You're never going to build a train that's faster than a plane, and there's no point in taking the train anywhere if you're just going to have to rent a car once you get off.
>Then why is Brightline West intent on HSR?
My guess? To hype up investors. It will definitely help that it's just going to be a straight line through the desert and doesn't have to worry about being part of a larger rail network. But I still have my reservations. It's already impossible to build anything on the west coast, they're not making things any easier on themselves.

cali needs to upgrade their existing amtrak routes desu, considering how scenic and important the surfliner route is, they should just double track it first and run regular local services in different corridors.

>>2049445
I'm not talking about the vacationers man, I'm talking about the snowbirds. Not people who will be in Florida for 6 days but people who will be there for 6 months.

>>2049451
If you're spending 6 months in Florida you'll want your own car. Snowbirds won't be taking the train down.

>>2049452
Someone who owns two homes is generally wealthy enough to own two cars. And of course there will be intermittent travel to New York and back, there always is.

>>2049453
>Someone who owns two homes is generally wealthy enough to own two cars.
Bold assumption made by someone who has never owned a car, but if your business model is dependent on geriatrics who will use it 2x a year, it might not be feasible.

>>2049450
Did you forget about CAHSR in a CAHSR thread?

>>2049454
>Bold assumption made by someone who has never owned a car
It's not an assumption it's basic math.

>>2049456
Can't wait for school to start again

>>2049432
>>2049449
>>2049444
Pretty sure that part of the Brightline airport connection is technically HSR since it runs at 125 mph/200 kph, owing to both straight track and no grade crossings, but that's a relatively short distance compared to the slower portion along the Atlantic Ocean where it shares the network (albeit with its own trackage) with the freight lines.

Trying to build an entirely new network is nearly impossible, you need to have upgrades of some additional track and make some compromises in grade crossings and you'll still have rail. Texas Central Railway made the mistake of trying to plot out an entirely new right of way (part of it being parallel to major power lines) and all the ROW required; what they should've done is upgraded existing railroad tracks and share it with Union Pacific, then add just 17 miles of track and lease it from TxDOT so it sits between the lanes. Now you have a complete track from Houston to Dallas and can add Houston suburban stations, College Station, Waco, suburban Dallas, and Dallas.

>>2049428 (OP)
>Why are trainheads so obsessed with the arbitrary distinction of "high speed rail"?
Autism and other mental illness.

>>2049428 (OP)
>Why are trainheads so obsessed with the arbitrary distinction of "high speed rail"?
Like anon said it's not trainheads but urbanists, particularly the astroturfed developer shills and their mindless cattle followers. By slapping arbitrary definition on it you can extract so much more money from it, often without doing much at all.

>>2049479
>125 mph/200 kph
I'd consider anything between 160 and 240 kph only "higher speed rail" and not proper HSR.

>>2049501
right, the tokaido shinkansen wasn't hsr

>>2049533
The Tokaido Shinkansen was built in the 1960s, you can't apply the same standards over half a century in the past when HSR was only just being defined as a proper concept. Nowadays it runs at 285 kph.
Do better.

>>2049445
That's a little too optimistic for air travel. It's two hours on a plane but not accounting for airport security and increasing rates of delayed/cancelled flights. Airports only have so much capacity, so building out a supplementary train route (and making it reliable) would entice some people.

because bickering about semantics and definitions and minutiae on the internet gives an immediate dopamine release, compared to agitating for things irl which is difficult and ego-bruising

>>2049605
>It's two hours on a plane but not accounting for airport security and increasing rates of delayed/cancelled flights.
Everyone already knows that. Minimizing trip times still matters to people, which is why airlines dominate the NE USA to Florida travel segment. Even if it takes 6-8 hours total time-in-transit, that's more than twice as fast as Amtrak - and that is presuming Amtrak doesn't get delayed itself.

>Airports only have so much capacity, so building out a supplementary train route (and making it reliable) would entice some people.
It's cheaper and the public will get faster results if airports are expanded versus building a new rail line.

>>2049615
the great thing about aviation is outside of the plane stations, there's no land acquisition or infra cost aside from radar and radio. and like some anon said, once airplanes get cbtc they'll be able 20x capacity on every route

who is the mythical sorta person that wants to travel from city to city but also can't afford a car

>>2049428 (OP)
The problem with California High Speed Rail is that it is both a political project and an engineering project. Right now the state government is highly dysfunctional. To begin with they never enlarged the number of state legislators to account for the increase in population. So there are only 40 state senators and 80 state representatives, when there could easily be 80 state senators and 240 state representatives. Sacramento also runs an extremely inefficient centralized state bureaucracy where posts have more to do with political favors than actual aptitude.

California High Speed Rail was approved as part of a 2008 ballot initiative for a high speed rail link between San Francisco and Los Angeles. After it passed this concept was changed by Sacramento into the current pathway that routes the train into the interior. Knownothings online will say that this was necessary because the direct route was too mountainous and costly. But the reality is that the politicians and bureaucrats from Los Angeles who work in Sacramento rerouted the entire project to make their own journey from LA to Sac shorter at the expense of all other potential users. Also a mountain route would have been harder engineering but it would have been easier politically because California has strong property rights and thus almost no eminent domain. So when we account for all the legal fees along the current route the mountain route probably might not have been as costly in comparison as anticipated.

While I agree that the money would have been better spent on ordinary rail in California, the ballot initiative system means that by state law the project as voted on must be fulfilled. California has no constitutional means of ending the project short of another ballot initiative.

>>2049649
>who is the mythical sorta person that wants to travel from city to city but also can't afford a car
Imagine you are a young, twinky, overpaid product manager for a tech company in San Francisco. Friday night you take the train down to West Hollywood, spend the weekend there with your friends doing drugs and catching pozzed loads, then Sunday your hung-over, tired and worn out ass can recover on a 3-4 ride back to San Fran in plenty of time for work on Monday. Much nicer than having to drive

>>2049649
judging by huge areas of europe and japan? most of the population. I know in canada I'd visit other cities more if I didn't have to pay for a flight or drive a long ass time. and when the US becomes a visitable country again, go to US cities as well.

>>2049649
I mean, my nearby city of 500k has trains every 30 mins to the capital 4-5 hours away, and they are busy all day every day

There are also trains going to basically every city in the country every hour as well, and they are always nearly full

So yes, loads of people, I use them a lot to get visa appointments for weird countries in the capital, or visiting family in smaller cities. Even just taking the kids for a weekend holiday somewhere works really well on the trains

>>2050376
So you'd rather sit around waiting years or decades for rail service to materialize than just flying somewhere you want to visit now? And if Europe and Japan are anything to go by, the rail ticket will be more expensive than airfare.

>>2049687
what the fuck are you on about
going through the central valley has absolutely nothing to do with going to sacramento

>>2050427
Not the guy you're raging at but Paris to Marseille is 49 eurobux one way, cheapest airfare I can find right now is about 150 round trip and that's if you do a month in advance, also what is your argument about "waiting for years", is anyone ITT claiming they can't go from SF to LA because there's no high speed rail? Has anyone EVER said that other than people with severe psychiatric issues?

>>2050506
>Not the guy you're raging at
You are that guy and you're the one being hyperbolic and emotional

>>2050512
I couldn't help but notice how you had nothing to refute the facts, and so you had to resort to samefriend accusations and "no U"

>>2050506
>but Paris to Marseille is 49 eurobux one way, cheapest airfare I can find right now is about 150 round trip and that's if you do a month in advance
what does dysfunctional state of europoor air travel have to do with rail service?

>>2050525
see
>>2050427
>if Europe and Japan are anything to go by, the rail ticket will be more expensive than airfare.
Next time, pay for the larger context window so you don't end up looking stupid

>>2050513
bot

>>2050376
>judging by huge areas of europe and japan?
Too bad this project isn't Europe and Japan, it's in California. I described a hypothetical HSR user here: >>2050270
Feel free to imagine and describe other potential rail users. Would be a worthwhile--though exceedingly difficult-- mental exercise for transit tards accustomed to mindlessly parroting lebbit memes and other propaganda nonsense. The vision and concept for HSR linking LA and SF in California is reasonable but you transit shills seem to live in lunatic fantasy land and don't understand even the simplest things.
>>2050500
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sq2dF0_NYiQ

>>2049454
Seems like the problem Autotrain has

>>2049428 (OP)
It's just autists gooning to urbanism and nipponese infrastructure.
In my region we would be much better served by increased amtrak service and improving existing rail lines to allow current trains to reach their designed speeds, instead advocacy groups are pushing heavily for high speed rail in a low density and mountainous area.

>>2049687
The coastal route from Oxnard to Santa Cruz is sparsely populated and economically insignificant. The Central Valley is home to 6.5 million people and much more economically relevant.

>>2049429
>Amtrak trains that don't even beat freeway trip times
This is primarily due to freight companies prioritizing their traffic and forcing Amtrak trains onto siding to wait. Even if it is illegal, enforcement is non-existent and the freight companies can get around it by running mega trains that are too large for their own sidings, forcing the Amtrak train off the line. The vast majority of the things wrong with Amtrak are due to them not owning their own lines. It isn't a coincidence that the NEC you point out as working are the only lines that Amtrak owns themselves.

HSR isn't able to run on the freight companies' rails and requires new tracks. This deconflicts freight and passenger traffic. The grade requirements also mean that an HSR line will have drastically fewer at-grade crossings, further streamlining traffic. The new lines are literally the best improvement for passenger trains in the US. Even if they don't run bullet trains on them, they'll be a massive bonus for intraregional travel.

>>2052794
>This deconflicts freight and passenger traffic.
It also deconflicts any cost savings from existing infrastructure and requires doing all the hurdles of laying rail all over again, just for a specific niche form of transport that has no utility in the existing market outside of appeasing shitlibs and laundering tax money into the pockets of megacorporation shareholders.

>>2052800
>existing infrastructure
The problem is the existing infrastructure. If the "costs savings" make the project non-viable, then it isn't a cost saving, it's just a dumb idea.
>no utility
It has a massive utility right now in intraregional transit for trips that are too short to make sense for a plane.
>appeasing shitlibs
As opposed to appeasing conservatards?
>tax money into the pockets of megacorporations
You're describing long distance driving and how it benefits car and oil companies.

>>2052794
>This is primarily due to freight companies prioritizing their traffic and forcing Amtrak trains onto siding to wait. Even if it is illegal, enforcement is non-existent and the freight companies can get around it by running mega trains that are too large for their own sidings, forcing the Amtrak train off the line.
Source: Your ass and other shitlib youtube videos

>>2052801
>As opposed to appeasing conservatards?
What a mind-blowingly stupid retort. Money not blown on an enormously expensive high-speed rail project can be spent on literally anything anything else.
The alternate spend could be for a left-wing agenda, like paying for illegal alien drug dealers to stay in hotels so their deportation hearings can be pushed back years. Or it could be for a right-wing agenda like blowing up the drug dealer boats so they never get here in the first place.
>It has a massive utility right now in intraregional transit for trips that are too short to make sense for a plane.
In other words, you have no idea what the relative utility is in concrete, measurable terms.

Why not build a giant railgun and launch train cars across the continent?

Train trips are universally slower than driving. Boston to SF by car is 45 hours and 79 hours by Amtrak. There is no reason to be on any train beholden to the train operator and their schedule when you can drive anywhere you want. The only time trains are faster is transiting to major cities from their suburbs, which you wouldn't want to use the train for other socioeconomic factor reasons.

>>2053319
Not an argument.

>>2053243
Traveling by gun WOULD be the most American form of transportation...

I'm an engineer for the high speed rail, AMA

>why is it taking so long
CDFW, PG&E, and BNSF is the short answer

>why is it costing so much
delays due to the above is the short answer

>why is there no track
because you can't just start laying track cutting through farmland and rivers and highways, you need to build a shitton of structures to go over or under all that stuff first

>>2054426
Pay close attention everyone. This man is a communist. He's blaming the evil *property owners* for your lack of a boondoggled train. Do not believe him him.

>>2054427
>oh no, not the poor corporations and regulatory bodies!
dumbfuck

>>2054426
Yes anon I completely believe it's everyone besides the retards in control of the project that are to blame

>>2054434
lmfao this dumbass thinks the contractor is "in control" of the project

>>2054435
I don't think you were lmfaoing when you posted that. You were likely seething, in fact

>>2054426
This is likely 100% larper bullshit but one of the reasons the government pulled funding is that they failed the compliance review that was requested. They can't give voters or the federal government a straight answer.

>>2049428 (OP)
>Sure it would be nice to have trains that go fast, but wouldn't you rather first have any trains at all? Insisting that all new passenger rail be "high speed" just makes it exponentially more expensive to build and less likely that anything will ever happen

No lmao, if it's not high speed rail then it's dead on arrival. You have to look at why passenger rail declined and almost went extinct in the US. It was for two main reasons. The first reason is two-part: the construction of the interstate highway system and affordable automobile ownership coupled with new cars that could comfortable travel at 60-80mph on the highways.

The second reason is airline travel which kept getting more affordable over time.

After you had 200+ horsepower V8s in affordable cars in the 1950s...and a massive road system, there was basically no reason to take passenger rail which was slower and more expensive.

In the modern day, Amtrak sucks. It's only useful in the northeast corridor megalopolis where automotive traffic is bad and driving to somewhere like New York or Boston means you have to pay to park your car.

Taking Amtrak in the midwest is depressing. I live in Kansas City. An Amtrak ticket from here to St. Louis, if you buy in advance and get it cheap, is between $30 to $40. Not bad, but the trip is 5h 40min at the quickest, occasionally it will be longer. One time 15 years ago (this has gotten better) the Amtrak had to let a freight train go by and the trip took between 8 and 9 hours.

By contrast, driving a car on I-70 between KC and STL takes 4 hours if you do the speed limit. If you're going 10 or 15mph over the speed limit it takes 3.5 hours. A tank of gas depending on your car is 40-60 dollars and in general takes a little more than half a tank to drive that distance.

So if you already own a car, driving is the same price or cheaper than taking Amtrak AND it's faster. Plus then you have a car at your destination and it's easier to get around.

>>2054485
>So if you already own a car, driving is the same price or cheaper than taking Amtrak AND it's faster. Plus then you have a car at your destination and it's easier to get around.

Point being, if you want passenger rail traffic to be successful in the US, it has to be more convenient than driving your car. In the dense northeast, that is often the case, even without high speed rail. But in the midwest, the south, or west of the rockies, it's just pretty much pointless unless it's significantly faster than taking your car

>>2054485
>So if you already own a car, driving is the same price or cheaper than taking Amtrak AND it's faster. Plus then you have a car at your destination and it's easier to get around.
And you aren't even taking into account transit between the stations and your starting/ending destinations. If you live in an exburb and your destination is an exurb might be adding another 15-30+ minutes at each end, which might be substantially less if you could just go point to point directly.

>>2054488
yeah that's a huge factor as well, given how spread out most American cities are, and the lack of effective public transit in many of those cities.

For passenger rail travel to be truly successful here, it needs to be almost as good as flying. Absolute bare minimum, if it's not as fast as taking a plane, it at least needs to be faster than taking a car.

OR at bare bones minimum, if it can't be faster than taking your car, it should be AS fast as taking a car, while being cheaper or more convenient.

>>2054485
The problem is that HSR doesn't really solve that problem of rail travel. It's not going to offer a significant advantage over flying in terms of cost and price, and even the European systems have had mixed results, like France banning short-range flights in favor of the HSR.

The Interstate Highway System sure didn't help the American rail system, but the whole rail system was declining in passenger-miles and total trips before World War II.

Personally, I believe the best thing that would make rail better in the United States RIGHT NOW would be making public transportation better. Amtrak isn't public transit, but I would say it has ABSOLUTELY suffered from the bad reputation that transit has. Transit advocates can cope and seethe about it, how rare it is that these incidents happen but the normies know and stuff like the death of Iryna Zarutska isn't helping.

>>2054534
>Personally, I believe the best thing that would make rail better in the United States RIGHT NOW would be making public transportation better.
While this is true, again the low density makes a big difference. There are cities in the US that already have more miles of rail than cities in Europe but get a fraction of the traffic because it's so spread out.

Washington DC Metro
6.5 million population
129 miles, 98 stations
166 million annual riders

Paris Metro
11.2 million population
153 miles, 321 stations
1.47 million annual riders

DC, despite having 85% of the rail miles and 30% of the stations only musters 11% of the annual riders.

>>2054545
It's not the low density, it's the fact that anyone who can afford to drive will choose it every time because of the bad reputation of public transit. No one wants to ride a system that's dangerous and filthy.

>>2054547
>It's not the low density, it's the fact that anyone who can afford to drive will choose it every time because of the bad reputation of public transit.
No, it's not just reputation. And the extent to which reputation is bad, long trip times is part of the problem.
It's not like the Paris metro has a stellar reputation.
Even the 2024 Olympic intro features a subway car breaking down:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdAxa8Pg1jY

>>2054545
>DC, despite having 85% of the rail miles and 30% of the stations only musters 11% of the annual riders.
The whole point of the DC Metro was highway replacement. It's designed to get productive people from the suburbs downtown to work and back. It is not really convenient for anything else.

>>2054587
It doesn't matter which system you look at. The only rapid transit or light rail system that comes anywhere close to an average European city on "annual riders per mile of track" is New York City.

Miles of track is not a perfect measure of system cost and complexity but it's a crude estimation of the raw infrastructure required.

>>2054587
Going to the suburbs and focusing on commuters is also probably what kept the DC Metro great, even in the late 1990s it was a beautiful, clean system with wool carpets.

Of course, even in the late 1990s, there was a reason why tourists didn't go beyond the National Mall area, and even now the rest of the city sucks even by northeastern big city standards.

>>2052791
No.

Santa Cruz, San Benito, Monterey, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, and Ventura Counties have a combined population of 2,348,601 people. That is not a sparse population.

Kern, Tulare, Kings, Fresno, Madera, Merced, Stanislaus, and San Joaquin Counties have a combined population of 4,324,586 people. Larger by 2 million people, but nowhere near the 6.5 million you claimed.

The Central Coast corridor between San Jose and Los Angeles has a provably higher GDP than the Central Valley corridor between Sacramento and Los Angeles.

>>2054608
>wool carpets.
Total kino. The 7000 series cars don't have the same SOVL.

>>2049428 (OP)
It's not about the speed in itself, it's about having separate right of way for long-distance services so you can run more freight and local services.
>>2049432
What do you mean by "upgrading the existing network"? Widening curves? Quad-tracking the existing ROW? Demolishing every station where you can't fit four tracks? Interrupting service on weekends to rebuild a line, one tiny segment at a time?

i think the obsession with "high speed" rail is just weebs jealous of the shinkansen. most people dont travel enough to make high speed rail worth investing into, but there definitely should be better freight and normal passenger coverage

>>2054512
Local passenger travel needs to be ironed out in the U.S before intercity passenger travel because most trips are made locally. It would've been a much better investment to invest in the LA Metro than CAHSR, many more trips are made inside the metropolitan area
Although I think it's a shame that Acela doesn't have its own dedicated HS viaducts
>>2055616
The reason why CAHSR exists is because of the busy flight corridor between LA and SF and the overcrowded airports.

>>2049449
>if you're just going to have to rent a car once you get off.
>He thinks this doesn't apply to airports
Lol wut?

>>2055639
>CASHR exists
It exists as an organization, not anything functional. It exists the same way the U.S. Space Force exists. I doubt that the airports are overcrowded since France had to shut down flights to make their HSR work

>>2055639
>LA
LAX is a dogshit airport with abysmal design and will never not be congested because it is designed in a fundamentally stupid way. idk about SF's airport though but it's SF so it probably sucks

The state needs to give Caltrans absolute authority over bike lanes.

>>2055784
The only thing Gruesome is good for

>>2055668
name the best airport in your opinion

>>2054717
yes but there is land to develop in the valley

>>2055784
Seeing LA city leaders seething about this was weird. They couldn't quite articulate what they were mad about.

>>2055830
There's plenty of land to develop around places like Salinas, Soledad, Greenfield, King City, Paso Robles, Templeton, Atascadero, Santa Maria, Orcutt, and Lompoc. Like sure San Luis Obispo, Pismo Beach, and Solvang are built up, but there is a lot of room to build and develop along most of the Central Coast.

>>2055884
its literally a mountain range, versus a flat valley if you can't understand why its easier and more cash effective to develop one place over the other I don't know what to tell you.