[mschuster91]

> A reasonable observation many North Americans make is that it would just take too long to get anywhere by train, unlike in Europe.

Well, China has built a shit ton of high speed rail across their country. There is nothing preventing the US from doing just the same.

NYC <-> LA is like, what, 4000km? Sounds insane at a quick glance, but a 500 km/h maglev train makes that an 8 hour ride, compared to a 6h flight plus 1h "dead" time for boarding, luggage, and security theatre. Not much of a difference. A 300 km/h "classic" high speed rail like the German ICE will take 13h, but hey even that is manageable.

And unlike Europe, y'all have the advantage that your land is barely occupied by anything but a few farms.

[kentlyons]

The multiple levels of governments and associated regulations is very much preventing it from happening. If any one of them in any of the jurisdictions the train might travel says no (or drags their feet) it doesn't happen.

[mschuster91]

So what. Y'all managed to raise the minimum drinking age to 21 without passing a constitutional amendment by tying federal highway funding to compliance by the states [1]. There's nothing stopping your federal government from doing just the same extortion again if your politics are too ossified for a constitutional amendment or to get rid of NIMBYs.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Minimum_Drinking_Age_...

[kentlyons]

So it isn't nothing. It is something. If it were only the states vs the federal government, that would be great! Unfortunately it is also all of the county, city (and other??) local governments as well that have a say. And then in california in particular, things like the environmental protection laws have become weaponized as well to stop.

I suspect it would take something spectacular (like how the interstate system was created) to actually make meaningful progress. And the irony is once it's in place no one could imagine life without it.

[mpweiher]

Hmm...do you think Germany has fewer levels of government and, cough, less regulation?

And of course a lot of rail work now is inter-European, so you get different country governments and the EU as well.

[jamesaurichs]

US is actually smart enough to avoid big infrastructure debts. According to wikipedia, China has a 900B debt from high speed rails https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail_in_China.

[mschuster91]

I don't know why your comment was marked as dead, vouched it as you make a good point.

The thing is, debt isn't bad per se - having a strong rail network can actually enable far far bigger returns. The US is the perfect example actually... railroads were what enabled "going west" from the East Coast where the European settlers landed.

If you have a strong rail network, you can move a ton of goods (or people) with barely any emissions, leagues better than airplanes, cars and trucks - only ships have a better efficiency in fuel consumption/CO2 emissions per passenger/ton kilometer. And rail infrastructure can hold up insanely long... here in Germany we're still using signalling systems and rails literally built way before Hitler, before the first German democratic government, back when we still had a Kaiser. Spread the 900 billion debt over 100 years lifetime and whoops, pretty cheap, isn't it?

[jamesaurichs]

Thanks. I think having a few solid rails for really populars route is justified. The issue is building too many of these rails to where ridership is not even enough to produce a profit in the beginning, let alone sustain it forever. Also, cities grow and die. Can you imagine if US built out an expensive high speed rail from New York to Detroit? or Seattle to Portland?

[mschuster91]

> The issue is building too many of these rails to where ridership is not even enough to produce a profit in the beginning, let alone sustain it forever.

There's a ton of flights each day - the FAA says something around 45.000 flights [1], of which sadly there are no statistics if they are domestic or not. But even assuming just 25% are domestic, that's about 11.000 flights that could be done on a decent HSR network, saving local populations in the inflight zone of airports from a ton of noise and a lot of fuel/CO2 emissions.

No matter what, CO2 emissions will make air travel unsustainable very fast very soon, and the US is barely prepared for this new reality.

> Can you imagine if US built out an expensive high speed rail from New York to Detroit? or Seattle to Portland?

Well, that is how the US grew so fast from East to West back in the day [2]. IIRC, a lot of the existing lines are the same routes that were built back then.

[1] https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/by_the_numbers

[2] https://www.loc.gov/classroom-materials/united-states-histor...

[Gibbon1]

Yes the Chinese owe themselves 900B. They're going to rue the day when they find they can't pay themselves back.

[jamesaurichs]

China is rue(ing?) right now. China's local governments are dealing with a monumental local debt crisis from real estate fallout, and incidentally from too many built out unused rails and highways. And the center government has already said they are not going to rescue the local and provincial governments, "prefers local or provincial governments to sort out their own debt problems, and not create a moral hazard"

As a result, the civil servants in China are seeing 25-50% paycut.

[rad_gruchalski]

> Well, China has built a shit ton of high speed rail across their country. There is nothing preventing the US from doing just the same.

It’s been discussed many times. China simply does not have to deal with with unions, labour laws, land ownership and such. I don’t think we want to live in such system.

> A 300 km/h "classic" high speed rail like the German ICE will take 13h, but hey even that is manageable.

No, it won’t. There will be scheduled stops, weather, slow sections, accidents.

I used to take Cologne to Utrecht for 3 months once a week return travel. Only once I arrived in both directions on time.

[mschuster91]

> China simply does not have to deal with with unions, labour laws, land ownership and such. I don’t think we want to live in such system.

Japan is a democracy that has all three, and yet they managed to build a HSR system. France has a very good HSR system as well.

> No, it won’t. There will be scheduled stops, weather, slow sections, accidents.

The entire point of the US being suited for HSR is that it is so sparsely settled in the center of the country that you don't need frequent stops, or you can get away with just having every 2nd/3rd train stop at a specific city - with 30min of spacing between the trains, that's still 1h/1.5h interval for "flyover states". And a single train carries up to 1.000 passengers, replacing 4-5 planes.

> I used to take Cologne to Utrecht for 3 months once a week return travel. Only once I arrived in both directions on time.

Please don't assume that the shit our politicians did with the DB network is valid for HSR in general.

[rad_gruchalski]

> Japan is a democracy that has all three, and yet they managed to build a HSR system. France has a very good HSR system as well.

Yeah, both started in 1960s.

> The entire point of the US being suited for HSR is that it is so sparsely settled in the center of the country that you don't need frequent stops, or you can get away with just having every 2nd/3rd train stop at a specific city - with 30min of spacing between the trains, that's still 1h/1.5h interval for "flyover states". And a single train carries up to 1.000 passengers, replacing 4-5 planes.

And now you have 4000km of high speed rail tracks to keep in top notch condition. With a mountain range between the two coasts. And trains passing rather frequently.

> Please don't assume that the shit our politicians did with the DB network is valid for HSR in general.

Oh. Nothing to do with that. Weather, accidents, no staff were the most common causes.

[mschuster91]

> Oh. Nothing to do with that. Weather, accidents, no staff were the most common causes.

Actually, all three can be blamed on Deutsche Bahn. The Swiss for example have a ridiculously strong tree management program [1], which means they can keep operating even in storms because there is no danger of trees falling onto tracks which is a fairly common occurrence in Germany.

Accidents as well... a lot of tracks, everything up to 160km/h, has level crossings with roads. Only above 160 km/h you need dedicated, crossing free infrastructure. We could get rid of a lot of these level crossings if we wanted to.

And no staff? DB pays shit, that's the reason why no one wants to work for them, and the "private competitors" pay even less. And if the railroad workers go to strike, the entire fucking country shits on them for daring to fight for their rights.

[1] https://www.waldwissen.net/de/technik-und-planung/naturgefah...

[lostlogin]

> The Swiss for example have a ridiculously strong tree management program

Without even pausing I assumed this was some business speak MBA crap. I cackled when I realised.

[laurencerowe]

As any British person knows, leaves on the line are no joke.

[lostlogin]

> And now you have 4000km of high speed rail tracks to keep in top notch condition.

Maintaining hundreds of planes is also hard and planes are terrible for the environment and terrible to travel in. Surely we can aim higher?

[fsh]

The TGV averages ~280 km/h on several long-distance routes in France. For example, Paris-Strasbourg (490 km) takes 1:45.

[rad_gruchalski]

Trains travelling from Paris to Strasbourg cover a distance of around 246 miles (396 km) during the journey.

[Glawen]

But it is 490km by car

[rad_gruchalski]

Sure, but the train doesn't travel by car. 396 km.

[Glawen]

I don't get where you're going. Your initial take is that your ICE route in Germany was slow. Indeed because Germany has not a lot of dedicated high speed train track and it has a lot of stops. That is why the TGV example is brought up, as it runs on dedicated track. 1h45min for 400km (500km by road) from city centre to city center is unbeatable, and you just need to show up 5 min before train departure. That is why there is no flights from Strasbourg to Paris anymore.

[fsh]

The train track is 493 km long: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris-Est%E2%80%93Strasbourg...

[saalweachter]

You're going to pass through at least ten other states, and by or through at twenty or so other metros, and stop and none of them? And you expect to get the land rights needed to build a rail line straight enough to hit 500 kph?