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Comment by rmason | Hacker News Reader

My father told me a story about discontinuing a street car line (called an interurban) in a town North of Detroit. There was a hearing at city hall and hundreds of villagers turned out.

Dozens of people made the case to keep the line. Finally the street car company's lawyer got up and made the business case for discontinuing the line. He concluded by asking the crowd how many of you used our company's street car to get to this meeting? Not a single hand went up.

It's easy to tell a pollster you're for high speed rail but how many will actually buy a ticket? Perhaps they should ask for them to prepay for a ticket?

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Did the streetcar line serve city hall, and did it run reasonably often at the time the meeting was set to end?

Depending on the answers, there are two totally different lessons to be drawn there!

That's the issue with public transportation in the US. Cars, gas, and land are cheap, therefore personal transportation is cheaper than public transportation. When it's more affordable to drive into a city and park for free than take a train/bus and be limited to their schedules and locations, personal transportation wins every time, like in the OP's anecdote. Personally, I think this is a wonderful thing, but I also know public transportation services in other countries are much better at overcoming these problems than in the US.

There are two competing issues, one is what you say, and the other is that public transportation often sucks pretty hard. Some places lean heavily one way, and some lean heavily the other way. My point is that without knowing this context, we don't know if that story is an example of "people say they want public transportation but don't actually use it" or if it's an example of "public transportation is set up badly and then the people who run it are somehow surprised when people don't use it."

Also, are the type of people who attend city hall meetings the type of people who are most benefited by public transportation?

>It's easy to tell a pollster you're for high speed rail but how many will actually buy a ticket? Perhaps they should ask for them to prepay for a ticket?

I use the MBTA on a fairly frequent basis. I would use it every day if biking didn't half my commute time.

I've also used Megabus to visit New York City, for day trips even, Acela for an interview in New York once, and a short domestic air flight to visit a friend in Washington DC for a weekend. These costed ~$30, ~$200, and $500 for round trips, respectively.

Note that the bus takes almost five hours, the train takes four hours, and the airline flight took about two to three hours. The bus and train were crossing the same distance between the same two cities, and a comparable air trip would have cost $450 for a 1 hour, 15 minute flight.

Why is the transit system structured so that by taking "high-speed" public transit over slower private transit, I reduce my trip by 20% but pay 9x more? Why is it that if I actually want to travel quickly, I have to take a private transit agency (ie: JetBlue), and can quarter the time spent in transit by spending twice as much as the next-fastest option and 15x as much as the slowest option?

In particular, how can we talk about a so-called "high-speed" rail system in which the gap between driving and taking a train is only one hour but the cost gap is multiplication by nine?

Well, Acela isn't really high speed rail; it only shaves off about an hour compared to the regular train (and costs around twice as much).

But, that aside, Acela is really competing with air. Their bread and butter traveler is traveling on business and they're taking Acela over a plane because they prefer to travel on Acela for a variety of reasons. They don't really care about cost within reason.

Those same travelers won't typically take a bus. If they do, they'll take something like the LimoLiner which is priced in the same ballpark as Amtrak. (I tried it once and didn't like it as much.) However, regular buses are always going to be the cheapest option both because they're typically competing for price-sensitive customers and they can take advantage of a a road network that already exists and that they don't need to maintain (other than whatever taxes they pay).

Right. Having train travel target business travelers who are neither price-sensitive nor particularly time-sensitive is a choice -- a political choice. For instance, when we say that buses "can take advantage of a a road network that already exists and that they don't need to maintain (other than whatever taxes they pay)", that doesn't mean the infrastructure doesn't need to be paid-for, it means someone other than the transit supplier is paying for it. Why do we suffer this delusion that Amtrak should have fewer eminent-domain rights and take in fewer tax dollars than the highway system, and then act surprised that nobody takes Amtrak?

It's like complaining that fruit trees die when you refuse to water them.

>and then act surprised that nobody takes Amtrak

But lots of people take Amtrak in the Northeast Corridor--enough to subsidize the rest of the system. The problem is that there aren't any other areas in the country that are as well-suited for busy inter-city rail as the Boston to DC corridor. Almost everything else is lower density and further apart.

I'm not an expert on transportation cost structures but my observation in most places in the world is that, given a decent highway system, buses are going to beat intercity trains every time when it comes to price.

Given that buses usually don't beat rail in speed terms, and are usually less environmentally friendly, the only real reason for buses to exist is price. If they can't beat rail on that they simply won't run.

The problem is that there aren't any other areas in the country that are as well-suited for busy inter-city rail as the Boston to DC corridor.

A lot of money's being pumped into trying a high-speed rail corridor between Los Angeles and San Francisco. And to be honest, I'd think there's at least a moderately good case for running up to Portland, Seattle and possibly even Vancouver. There's an awful lot of tech-industry commuting by air on those routes right now.

They're not as well-suited because the distances between the major cities are greater. And LA is so spread out with horrible traffic once you get there.

But, yes, the West coast corridor is an obvious candidate if the idea can be made to work anywhere in the US. (As is upgrading the Northeast Corridor where demand is already proven.)

> the airline flight took about two to three hours

Only if you assume that getting to and from the airport, and getting through security, and boarding, are all instant.

Megabus drop and pickup in Manhattan. Acela goes to and from 34th st. Neither require me to play strip tease or watch 45 minutes of idiotic bin-shoving pantomimes.

The nearest airport to Manhattan is LGA, it takes 30-40 minutes depending on traffic. JFK and EWR are 40-60 depending on traffic. None of them have direct subway or rail connections, so you have to either take a car or cobble together various public transportation options (subway then bus, subway then shuttle, subway then taxi, train then monorail) with frequently unsynchronised schedules.

The idea that air travel is more convenient than the Acela train in the NE corridor is just silly.

Personally, I prefer taking the train in the Northeast Corridor but:

1. There is a regular train from EWR right into Penn Station

2. Even though the train is more convenient in a number of ways, flying can get me from Boston into Manhattan earlier in the day than the train. Usually doesn't matter, but it may if you have a morning meeting and can't come down the previous night.

3. Although I've taken it, the Acela all the way from Boston to DC starts to not make sense vs. flying--and tends to cost more as well.

> 1. There is a regular train from EWR right into Penn Station

There is, but it runs relatively infrequently and you have to switch to the monorail, which is only faster than walking because it has a right of way.

> 3. Although I've taken it, the Acela all the way from Boston to DC starts to not make sense vs. flying--and tends to cost more as well.

Sure. I cheat by being the smug git in the middle.

But I'd still rather take the train, honestly, from Boston to DC. I hate flying with a radiant intensity that could launch a thousand astronomy PhDs.

What's "infrequently"? Has it changed recently? I used to have to DTW-NYC once or twice a week, and I always routed to EWR because I knew I'd just be a quick train trip to Manhattan. I don't remember ever waiting very long.

> What's "infrequently"?

It depends on the time of day. Between 15 and 45 minutes, in my experience.

That said, I find getting to EWR to be much easier than getting out of EWR.

I hate the monorail at EWR with a passion - the slow speed, the long stop at a parking garage before the terminal, the insane loop round some kind of junkyard/parking lot it takes on the way to the railroad station, but all told it's still only about 10 minutes at worst.

They have one of those at SFO also and it's not exactly fast. That said, it's a big improvement over the prior shuttle bus to the rental car center--though the BART connection I usually just take that if I'm going into the city in the vicinity of the convention center.

The one at SFO is pretty standard. What's irritating about the one at EWR is that it's so unecessary. The loop seems like it's there because they couldn't get somebody to accept the supporting pillars in their precious car yard, and the general speed is a bit less impressive than the monorail to the space needle in Seattle.

Acela isn't "high-speed" rail, it's basically normal rail with high-speed hardware which occasionally goes fast enough to barely clear the threshold for calling it "high speed."

Acela averages less than 70MPH. In a proper high-speed system that would be more like 180MPH. Boston to DC would be 2.5 hours, vastly faster than flying once you account for airport nonsense.

In a proper high-speed system that would be more like 180MPH

The current record for highest average speed on a rail line is China's 176mph average Shijiazhuang-Zhengzhou. Prior record holder was 173mph on the Champagne-Ardenne to Lorraine run on the LGV Est corridor of the TGV.

All high-speed rail systems have stretches where they go faster than that, but average speeds are nowhere near what you're proposing. Unless, of course, your argument is that no "proper high-speed system" exists anywhere in the world today.

In what world is 176MPH "nowhere near" 180MPH? I was explicitly approximate, and being 4MPH off is pretty good!

I mean "nowhere near" in the sense that the outliers -- the current and previous record holder for average speed -- haven't managed to crack your proposed 180mph criterion for "high speed", and the non-outliers definitely aren't coming close to that number. Common definitions of "high speed" rail kick in at 200kph or 250kph, which are 124mph and 155mph respectively.

Even if we go with the higher of those numbers, that's still around a 13% minimum difference in average speed between what's accepted and what you're proposing.

(for non-Americans, what I'm arguing with here is the idea that ~290kph would be the minimum average speed to call something "high speed rail")

Well that sure is nitpicky but if it makes you happy....

My actual point is that Acela is painfully slow and proper high-speed rail is much, much faster. A 13% difference in the numbers is not really relevant, especially when I took pains to indicate that it was approximate, and never said that was some sort of minimum.

While I agree that more high-speed rail would be amazing in the US as a viable transit option, a lot of the calculus around efficiency of it rests on it being exempt from the likes of TSA. TSA has been making their way into train stations for a few years now:

2013: http://reason.com/archives/2013/08/08/tsa-to-ruin-train-trav...

2015: http://www.infowars.com/tsa-airport-style-searches-on-all-am...

> TSA has been making their way into train stations for a few years now:

Yeah, 'Amtrak police' are now also doing their own 'random' inspections and swabs, etc. Last few times I took the Amtrak from Penn Station they were doing this.

Yet another reason for me to take the bus (which is 80% cheaper, as long as they're not sold out).

FWIW, the most recent study I've seen from Amtrak sets a target of about 4 hours from Boston to DC. (Which would be quite competitive with air.)

https://www.amtrak.com/ccurl/214/393/A-Vision-for-High-Speed...

> cost $450 for a 1 hour, 15 minute flight

Remember to allow time for getting to/from the airports (which typically are a bit of a trek from downtown areas), allowing time to check in and clear security.

Right. That "1 hour, 15 minute flight" is really a minimum of about four hours. The train is probably faster, door-to-door.

There are plenty of places where the pitifully bad systems that already exist are not just used, but used to well beyond their capacity.

Like... SF and environs, where the rail-based transit systems are basically all running hobbled all the time due to being way over capacity and way past expected lifetime of equipment. Caltrain just reported weekday ridership is now around 62,000, for example, but is struggling to replace 25-year-old equipment that breaks down on an almost weekly basis.

SF rail transit is very good by US standards. The system is old and worn out, but it takes you where you want to go in a reasonable amount of time. Which is, after all, the point.

Its also a question of pricing. No point in launch a shiny new transportation tech when its priced using price skimming.

Much better approach (for society) is to launch it with a super low discounted price until its gained some mindshare and people had a chance to evaluate it in the context of their routines.

This tale reminds me of the scene in the movie Singles, where the protagonist is working to create a new train, but is denied by the mayor because he knows that "people love their cars".

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