[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.

[rumanator]

> How fast is this train going?

Typically, the commercial speed of high-speed trains is about 300-350km/h.

> And you still need to get to/from the station.

Train stations tend to be located in the city center, not 50km away.

> At 200mph it'll also be a 3-4 hour ordeal at least, and more if there are stops in the middle.

Madrid-Barcelona takes less than 3 hours, and starts/ends near the city center (check Atocha and Barcelona Santa).

Unlike airplanes, the bulk of the trip is spent sitting comfortably in your cozy chair with plenty of leg room, internet access, electric outlets, no noise or pressure fluctuation, and a nice landscape to enjoy.

[manigandham]

This thread has gone off the rails. The point isn't that trains are more comfortable than planes. That's obvious. It's that a train is not currently viable compared to the existing airline routes.

The US and California are not spending > $100B to build this. Even with all that comfort, people want cheap and fast. Talking more about how nice trains are makes no difference to actually getting one built unless you have a plan on how to acquire all the money, real estate and political will to get it done.

[pas]

And you have wifi/mobile-net, comfortable seating, a table, power socket.

Now, that said, if the stations are not connected to the cities they are in, then that's a problem. And maybe this is a near unsolvable one, due to costs.

[arcticbull]

I suggest you take a train sometime! They're really pleasant!

[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.

[arcticbull]

Train stations tend to be located right downtown whereas airports, for various reasons, far outside. You can't exclude that delta.

SFO is in San Mateo, the next county over -- almost 15 miles away. Oakland airport is closer to 20 miles away. A minimum of 30 minutes by car, 40 minutes by Bart from downtown SF. On the other hand, the high-speed rail link would pick up at the Salesforce Transit Center (Embarcadero Station) at the corner Howard and Fremont, stopping at San Jose Diridon station.

Yes plaines are fast in the air, that's not a surprise. However, they're epically slow when parked at the gate while you clear security, epically slow as they taxi, dead stopped as they wait to take off due to ATC hold and weather issues, and similarly dead stopped when they're waiting for the previous plane to clear the gate at the destination airport, while you wait in line to get off, and while you wait for your bags, and while you wait for your taxi.

C'mon now. "Plane go fast" is just a small part of the story, and I'm an AA EXP.

Again, I think the infrastructure costs in the US tend to be massively overinflated due to graft instead of actual cost.

[manigandham]

This conversation has gone off a tangent. The comparison isn't about trains being more comfortable than planes (that's obvious). It's about planes vs trains as a transportation option.

It's not viable to build a long-distance rail line given the same total time (even if more comfortable since people want cheap and fast), especially not at the cost of $100B+.

If you want to call it inflated prices because of graft then fine, but that means you need to solve that first. Which goes back to my original point that there are many other obstacles that need to be overcome before high-speed rail makes sense here.