How to speed up US passenger rail, without bullet trains

    > How does the geographic context explain how the US was (apparently) an excellent fit for passenger rail until the 1920s-1930s, but not anymore?

    > Even in Japan, where you can ride the bullet train all the way from Kyushu to Hokkaido, almost anyone would book a flight for that unless they really hated flying.

Planes did not exists.

Mbta commuter rail is not a good system. I tried it for a month (Fitchburg line), the train was scheduled once an hour and was regularly half an hour or more late. The passes were exorbitantly expensive, too; more than the cost of car ownership for the same route. I so badly want it to work, I love the idea of it, but the day to day experience is comically bad.

Chicago's commuter rail system is called Metra (operating code MTX).

They own some of their own rails. UP and BNSF operate 4 of their commuter routes. CSX owns most of a few of the Metra operated routes.

Once, I was delayed 2 hours on Christmas Eve by a 1 Mile + Long freight train that broke down while crossing our main line pulling into the freight yard south of O'Hare Airport. A victim of CSX's "precision scheduled railroading".

Back when Metra pre-recorded the automated announcements, they specifically had one for delays caused by "freight train interference". The freight operators don't give a flying fuck who they interfere with, because they are empowered to.

Those are all local systems, all the cross country and intercity (for cities where their suburbs haven't merged like Chicago or the NE) stuff has to share tracks with cargo rail.

That lack of delays from cargo is also why they work a little better. One other big delay though is that basically none of the trains operate as expresses so they have loads of little stops along the way serving all the little towns along the route where little delays build up and by the end of the run they're sometimes hours behind schedule.

But commuter rail is pretty different, right? The point of discussion was more around the restrictions of intercity.

(Although sometimes these projects are built overnight, between departure of night and morning trains [1])

The Hokuriku shinkansen started construction in 1989 and opened reaching Nagano by 1997, just eight years later and in time for the 1998 Nagano Olympics. Of course they've built more extensions to it since then, most recently to Fukui just last year.

The Tokaido Shinkansen was on the drawing board in the late 1930s, and opened in 1964, after having been interrupted by the war and shelved for many years. A project starting today and opening in 2050 would be about that speed of development, although with the then-novel technology all being proven already one would hope things could be done a bit faster now.

[1] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_BYW4YYqG5A

Indeed. In fact, though government approval was granted in Dec 1958, the Shinkansen construction started only in April 1959. And it took five years to open. To say nothing of the fact that it only covered 300 miles and had huge cost overruns of 90% so that the total cost in today’s money would be an astounding $15 billion.

That line from Tokyo to Osaka needed sustained funding for a neverending half decade and wouldn’t have worked as well with just a burst of effort.

By comparison, these days we have much more advanced technology so the Central Subway in SF only cost $1.9 b for the extensive 1.7 miles it covers and though construction started as late as 2012, the line was open in the blink of an eye, and passengers were riding it ten years later.

Indeed, it is a triumph of our modern methods of not expecting things overnight that had this much larger and more complex project delivered so much faster.

An old master carpenter I knew once used to say “Measure a thousand times, then before you cut measure another thousand times. Then cut once”. In the many decades since I’ve known him he has built a single table that IKEA would be jealous of on his own. Any time I gaze upon it I am reminded of our extensive success with rail in California through sustained careful effort, never rushing, always with focus. As the Bene Gesserit say, “Our plans are measured in centuries”

You don't need to cover the entire country. Building out routes that are already seeing demand would be plenty.

The new Borealis route (short run of the Empire Builder from Chicago to St. Paul) was profitable in like, weeks, after it started running. It is consistently sold out.

How is it distinct in any way that would undermine their argument? Do people go airport to airport to then not drive, where people going to downtown would want to drive? Their point is that people go to other cities without their vehicle all the time with plane travel, so high speed rail would have plenty of demand up to a certain distance.

Not entirely true… Eurostar killed London to Brussels and London to Paris flight numbers

Train fares are just smoking crack and it’s so frustrating, because I want to take trains. I love everything about it but the price.

Per hour they will be much cheaper. Part of self-fulfilling prophecy is that per hour price is mostly inelastic, so as trains get slower and take more time the price rises. And higher price means less people take trains...

plus an hour on the train, or a hundred bucks in a taxi on the new york side, and likewise on the chicago side, plus security screening. and luggage is free too, I think?

so mostly just faster.

It's worth noting that at least in China, you must go through security checks before boarding bullet trains which include ID verification, X-rays of passenger and their luggage, and some liquid checks (staff may ask you to take a sip of your drink to confirm it's safe). Depending on the time of day, it is a bit quicker.

The main time saver is that the train stations are much more central. Say you you need to leave your office in Beijing's financial district and meet a client at their office in Shanghai's financial district. The station in Bejing will be 6km from your office vs the airport (30km), and you'll get off the train 9km from your client (instead of 45km at the airport).

And the region between Beijing to Shanghai is fairly flat and densely populated (Tianjin, Shandong, Jiangsu, Hebei), which makes it easier to justify and build out the associated infra, as plenty of other slower lines can also be run concurrently - specifically by connecting Tianjin (one of the most important cities in China)

Meanwhile, the only major population centers between NY and Chicago are Pittsburg and Columbus - both of whom combined have a fraction of the population that Jiagnsu or Shandong have.

Furthermore, land acquisition is different in a country like the US versus China. Mass expropriation or eminent domain of land is politically untenable in the US, but something that is easier to implement in China as a significant amount of land remains under local municipal ownership instead of private ownership.

> If you include the time spent arriving early, going through security, etc, it probably comes out about even.

Yeah, but that only lasts until someone figures out a clever way to use a train as a weapon, in which case you get to add the same security time to the front of the trip -- or even longer, since we've actually managed to get the airport security time down a bit over the past two decades. It would seem optimistic to try to scale usage of rail without accounting for the (time, safety, etc) costs that come with increased usage of rail...

I don't see why it's a problem for a potential rail service for San Francisco and Los Angeles that there are no heavily populated areas between the two cities. There's no reason why you couldn't fill up a train with passengers at the start and travel non-stop to the destination, just as the vast majority of airlines operate.

Trains still have all their usual benefits including better passenger comfort and higher energy efficiency, and there is the option to build intermediate stations if the demand increases in the future.

I would also question the claim that overnight trains cannot be justified for business travel. If the cost is comparable to a hotel room - which is a big 'if', granted - this allows employees to be better rested and therefore work more effectively during the day.

You're not going to drive 18 hours straight. It would be wildly dangerous for you to try as you will fall asleep at the wheel. Even if you tried it, you're going to have to make stops for gas, bathroom, and to eat, which will push the trip beyond one day. Which means you're going to have to get at least one hotel room along the way (more expense and time). And, you're assuming perfect traffic conditions, which doesn't exist, we all know.

You can go to the bathroom on the train. You can sleep on the train. You can eat on the train. Which means the 28 hours is the total time and the $175 is total price. Avg gas price is 3.37/gal. (https://ycharts.com/indicators/us_gas_price) Avg new car milage is 25 mpg, 52*3.37 is ... $175. Same as the train fare, but that's just the gas.

Taking the car is just dangerous and miserable IMO. Train wins.

>which is why most people choose driving or something else

Most people in the US have never ridden the Amtrak. Not even once in their lives. Source?

https://www.newsweek.com/more-americans-taking-train-ever-pa...

Amtrak set a record in December, the most passengers ever in a year. 32.8 million. If every single one of those rides was a different person instead of repeat riders, that would still be less than 10% of the total US population.

Yet 83% of the population supports more investment in Amtrak.

https://www.masstransitmag.com/rail/press-release/53068546/a...

It doesn't sound like the US population uses cars by choice to me. It sounds like they're forced to use cars, because their area has little or no Amtrak service.

I rode the Amtrak an average of twice a month last year, and the train was delayed/late only once. That's much less frequent than traffic jams I'd say. You waited for a bathroom? Okay, was there a big line or something, because otherwise that's gonna be like 5 minutes at most. It takes far longer than 5 minutes to find an off ramp with a service station and then get back to traveling. When compared to air travel, there is always a line when you need to use it because there's typically only 2 toilets for each cabin section of the plane. And everyone is loaded up on the complimentary beverage at the same time.

Are Japanese passenger trains better? Yes, of course they are. The cars are cleaner, the ride is smoother, train fare is paid with an IC card, platforms are level with the train so you don't need to drag luggage up stairs. I would love to see Amtrak improve to the level of Japan. But I'll still take Amtrak over driving/flying in the US any day.

Yeah, using the median is pretty sweet and should hopefully bypass a lot of environment review which is the bane of building anything in CA. Even if it doesn't bypass average car speed, just the comfort of not having to drive that nasty stretch will be a godsend.

My only concern is pricing. It's gonna have to be about 50$ each way to be worth it in my opinion. You can get a flight to a fro for about 150$ and that's out an airport like burbank which is very low security and easy to navigate.

> Supposed to be ready for the ‘28 LA Olympics.

Imagine believing that anyone will be willing to attend the 28 games in America.

If you tell me when and where, I'll put money down on brightline's completion vs california high speed rail having any functioning sections in the next 10 years

I have absolutely zero faith in california high speed rail doing anything within my lifetime while China can build hundreds of miles in a few years.