[9nGQluzmnq3M]

Many cities solve this chicken and egg problem by building the necessary density next to the train station. Hong Kong and Japan are the most famous examples, but it works in Singapore and large chunks of Europe as well (although Parisian banlieues may not be the best model of urban planning for other reasons...).

[manigandham]

That falls under "political" problem. Who's going to build it? Who's paying for it? Where are they getting the land? Is it existing rail lines or new ones?

The obstacles are known, they need to be overcome, and that's very difficult in the 3rd-biggest country by population and land area with an incredibly diverse set of national and regional governance and cultures.

[closeparen]

Financing the development is not the problem, getting the neighbors to consent to it is.

[arcticbull]

Yes it’s sad to see America’s giving up before even trying. Defeatism I believe.

[manigandham]

It's not useful to generalize like that. America is far bigger than most can imagine and the current challenges are much greater than the benefits.

The US doesn't just need trains as good as Japan, it needs them to be at least twice as good for the investments to make sense.

[arcticbull]

I have no idea why you think it has to be “twice as good” or what all that even means.

With that behind us, nobody’s proposing high speed rail from San Diego to Boston, just LA to SF and along the eastern corridor. And we can’t event have that. Let’s start small.

[chao-]

How about starting medium? Houston to Dallas.

https://www.texastribune.org/2019/05/15/texas-bullet-train-a...

I don't know the full list of requirements, but a route has been chosen, some number of federal approvals have been granted, some regulatory hurdles passed, and supposedly two federal approvals remain.

The route is easier (engineering and cost-wise), due to geography, than the California rail, or anything in the Eastern corridor, and to keep it even easier they're running it along existing utility corridors where possible to further reduce the amount of private land access they have to contend with:

https://www.texascentral.com/alignment-maps/

[manigandham]

It means that unless the trains are moving at 400mph with perfect comfort, free wifi, and a price of $20, nobody cares.

LA to SF is a 1 hour flight as cheap as $50, with the same last-mile effort and total trip time as a train. Airlines are also elastic to meet demand without major capex.

So who's going to spend the 100s of billions to buy the land and build a line for a 2-3x slower travel option that will take a century to be paid back? California is actually trying to do this and has failed miserably because the land and infrastructure costs alone make the project infeasible.

[rumanator]

> LA to SF is a 1 hour flight

How long does it take to/from each airport, and how long do you take to go through security, check-in and boarding?

A 1-hour flight easily becomes a 3 to 4 hour ordeal.

[manigandham]

How fast is this train going? And you still need to get to/from the station. At 200mph it'll also be a 3-4 hour ordeal at least, and more if there are stops in the middle.

[tropo]

The train is also slower than a simple speed and distance calculation would suggest.

The route won't be as straight as the route for an aircraft. Problems along the route (tight curve, noise limit, etc.) will create low-speed zones. Every town along the way will demand a stop, so the train has to slow for a stop before even reaching full speed.

[arcticbull]

LA to SF isn't a 1 hour flight. LA to SF is: you start at downtown SF, 45 minutes later you arrive an hour early at SFO for your 1 hour 30 minute block-time flight to LA where you then take a 45 minute taxi ride to your final destination.

That's a total of 3.75 hours end to end, assuming no fog hits you at SFO, as it does on the regular. That's within spitting distance of a rail link that allow you to jump off anywhere along the way. It's by no means 2-3X slower if you take into account the entire process, with no TSA, starting at your origin and ending at your actual destination.

For instance Ottawa to Montreal is a "17 minute flight" that takes an hour of block time, and an hour on either end, for a total of 3h, or you could take the 1h 30m train ride along standard-speed rail for $20 USD. Trains can easily be faster taking into account externalities, and much more pleasant.

They usually do in fact have free wifi, better comfort, and a $20 price point -- specifically because as you point out, they're competing against air travel.

Hundred of billions is again a weird, defeatist argument. California has failed because infrastructure in America is not about building infrastructure, it's about graft, and if infrastructure gets built along the way, that's fine too. That's the saddest part, honestly.

Honestly, this is kind of the textbook example of defeatism.

[CaptainZapp]

For instance Ottawa to Montreal is a "17 minute flight" that takes an hour of block time, and an hour on either end, for a total of 3h, or you could take the 1h 30m train ride along standard-speed rail for $20 USD.

The even better comparison, while not in America, is the route from Tokyo to Osaka. The distance (506km) is almost the same as from LA to San Francisco.

The Shinkansen takes between 135 and 153 minutes. Granted, you have to get from Shin Osaka to the city center; an additional 4 minute train ride or you take the subway.

Let's not even get into the comparison of the travel experience between gliding in a quiet, serene manner on spacious seat past Fuji San with the experience you get in a middle seat with a 29" seat pitch in economy class of a domestic flight in the US.

Also, if you invest a few hundred yen into a bento at Tokyo station let's not even think about the comparison of the culinary delights awaiting you for the trip.

[manigandham]

That's why I said "with the same last-mile effort and total trip time as a train".

Planes cruise at 500mph. Trains at 200mph will take 2.5x longer at best, assuming there aren't any stops along the way, and you still need last-mile transport to get to your destination. Trains are not going to be faster than planes at this distance, and that differential only gets worse as distance increases.

Meanwhile economic realities aren't "defeatist". There are much better things to spend $100B on than a slower alternative for a few people to travel between 2 specific cities. Trains may be the answer in the future, but there's a lot more that needs to change first.