As the U.S. fantasizes, the world builds high speed rail | Hacker News Reader

As the U.S. fantasizes, the world builds high speed rail

thetransportpolitic.com

403 pointsjseliger540 comments

For those who think it's because of geography / hyperloop is better technology anyways / any other red herring besides Brezhnevian political stagnation:

It's not completely implausible that, 30 years from now, most of Europe and Asia are connected by hyperloops while the US has built nothing and Internet commentators are arguing that hyperloop is old news compared to yet-unproven teleportation technology, and anyways the population density of the US doesn't support hyperloops.

What's good about Hyperloop? It's more expensive compared to rail.

HSR is more of a more efficient airplane - spacious & can walk around & get a drink.

I'm actually very skeptical about Hyperloop, but it seemed a good way of getting my point across. USA doesn't build stuff not because of technological viability but purely for political reasons.

"purely" is pretty strong. I give you the population density of Earth per ㎢:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_density#/media/File...

(Or if you prefer something more recent, have a look at: http://www.newgeography.com/content/002808-world-urban-areas...)

Pretty obvious which areas are ripe for HSR. Except for the mid-Atlantic corridor and arguably coastal California, nothing in the US really is.

It's the same thing when people go abroad then come back and complain how backwards cell phone service is here. People really don't appreciate how underpopulated the U.S. is relative to the rest of the world. (Conversely, it's also why we could accommodate practically an unlimited # of refugees compared to Europe, if we really cared to.)

I'm sorry but the density argument doesn't cut it. It's 30-100x as expensive to build rail through dense areas as it would be through farmland like I5. Most of the in between places are crazily cheaper.

It's not about cost. Long rails aren't that expensive. The problem is that a train running through Texas is useless unless you want to get to a specific city that the tracks actually pass through. Anywhere else could be hours of driving from the station and there isn't any infrastructure for that. A 4 hour cab/Uber ride is way too expensive.

Even a train that drops you off in the middle of Los Angeles could leave you many hours from the actual place in Los Angeles you want to be.

So basically the reason we don't bother with more HSR is because all of our large cities are unplanned sprawling messes and the rest of our transportation infrastructure is almost just as bad as our HSR.

LA is not such a great example anymore because metro/metrolink/flyaway + uber can take you anywhere you want to go from Union Station these days cheaply, sometimes quickly.

I wouldn't say cheaply or even that easily. If I have to get off a train (whatever that cost), catch a fly-away bus ($8 both ways), then get an uber ($50+ just to Burbank 12m away), it's going to be very expensive and very slow assuming the stars don't align perfectly.

> The problem is that a train running through Texas is useless unless you want to get to a specific city that the tracks actually pass through.

This argument ignores the new and existing population clusters that form and grow along a transportation link. You only have to look at interstate highway system and how new population clusters formed and existing clusters grew along the links once interstate hwy were built. Just reviewing the I-35, I-10 in Texas will show you that. Same can be seen with local subways and light rails systems. The clusters near stations grow faster than rest of the city.

We already have an antique low speed rail network that covers most of the US population centers. That makes it even cheaper to upgrade to high speed rail, since most of the land has been bought.

Also, when people in the US say "high speed rail", they usually seem to mean 180mph. That does not qualify as high speed rail overseas.

Upgrading the current low speed system to medium speed 180mph rail would mean that taking the train would actually be faster than driving (and for short air routes, faster than airport+flying).

My guess is that many existing routes would then become financially viable.

Unfortunately majority of existing rail lines and nearby lands are owned by freight rail companies. So repurposing them for HSR or passenger transport is an uphill battle. The areas where freight rail lines are shared with passenger traffic, freight gets priority making passenger trains unreliable, excessive delays and unattractive.

Many of the existing freight rail corridors are twisty and not designed in a way that works for high-speed rail at all (unless you buy land anyways to straighten out the more extreme curves) [1]. They might work for conventional passenger rail if you could get the freight railroads to play nice and do better maintenance on the tracks.

[1]: typical example -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_Curve_(Pennsylvania)

[2]: For a detailed example of what's possible & what isn't with existing corridors, you can look at this independent engineer's study of how to upgrade a rail route through Northern California: http://zierke.com/shasta_route/

Expense is only half of the problem. The other half is utility. There is virtually zero utility for building high-speed rail through the central US.

If US wants to revitalize mid-America, it has to build HSR through mid-America. The history of interstate highway system is good primer on it. Otherwise mid-America will empty out with time.

Shouldn't it? Why would anyone who isn't a farmer actually want to live there?

I disagree with you. Keeping mid-America populated is in long term interest of US. Mid-America is one of the most fertile landmass in the world. To farm this land, you need farmers and farm-hands. The farmers/farmhands need a support structure/community that is currently degrading as people move towards costs. Farmers are at the bottom of the totem pole in spouse selection and family formation. Nobody wants to move where farmers are and geographic area beyond reasonable driving distance inaccessible to farming communities. This leads to incest and inbreeding and all other ills that isolated communities experience. One solution, beyond farming automation, is to widen the geographical area accessible to farmers and their support structure. HSR can easily double or triple the distance covered currently by roads. HSR will bring distant communities in mid-America together.

People aren't moving out of the midwest because there aren't trains. They're moving out because there is no culture, limited natural recreation, etc. Trains aren't going to keep them there, and the low population density means the idea makes even less sense.

One event is rarely a driving force of change, it is always confluence of events that cause change. Lack of train is not root cause, it is a part of potential solutions to what ails the region. US would never had westward migration if population density was the driving force for movement. You want to populate an area, make it accessible and attractive.

> You want to populate an area, make it accessible and attractive.

You mean "start a gold rush".

Zero utility? Chicago, Minneapolis, Toronto, and Detroit are are among the most populated and most economically powerful cities in North America. Connecting them and other cities on and around the great lakes with high speed rail would provide massive economic opportunity.

Still, the areas of the USA as dense as Europe should have the same HSR networks that Europe has.

Nobody is traveling from Paris to Rome by high speed train, flying is cheaper and faster. But Paris to Lyon, Lyon to Milan and Milan to Rome, train wins. Why not in the USA?

This is exactly the point that keeps getting overlooked. Traveling from DC to Philly, or Philly to NYC, should take 45 minutes or an hour, the same way traveling from Beijing to Tianjin or Shanghai to Hangzhou takes 45 minutes or an hour. HSR isn't for connecting regions to one another. Air already does that well. HSR is for drawing cities within a region closer to one another.

The distance between major cities (the US has more than 50 cities with at least a million people alone) in many parts of the US is the distance between Paris and Rome, and they are pretty evenly distributed across the continent so you need mesh connectivity. In dense corridors that are closer together, they do use trains. The western half of the US is also extremely mountainous, which makes it a little more challenging to install a HSR mesh with many links approaching a thousand kilometers even though that is where some of the country's biggest cities are. Most of those links will never be economically justifiable given the amount of traffic that goes over them.

Because of the distances involved, air travel is much more economical in much of the US. Almost all of my trips to random cities in the US are at least a thousand kilometers; I think there is only one major city within a thousand kilometers, and that is connected by rail which people use.

I don't think that argument holds water when it comes to rail.

High density population centers separated by low density farmland and open space should be nearly ideal for high speed rail. There are huge swaths of land where there's nothing to tear down, there are fewer property owners to deal with, and there are usually fewer obstacles to route around.

Assuming that Hyperloop works at scale, what's good about it is the sheer speed, vastly eclipsing that of current high-speed rail. It could, theoretically, replace all existing flights between same-landmass cities with faster, cheaper, more fuel-efficient transport.

Of course, the technology itself is still way more unproven than that of high-speed rail, but that is its promise at least.

I think the great thing that might have come out of hyper loop is new solutions to problems that were never existed before. Like with any never built before project there would have been a ton of cool new little innovations that would never been possible otherwise but would naturally come along the way during hyperloop assembly. To start thinking outside the box you should start doing something that nobody else tried to do before.

> HSR is more of a more efficient airplane - spacious & can walk around & get a drink.

Much as I love HSR and curse its absence when in the USA the economics are not quite as clear. Air routes are more flexible than rail routes.

Of course that flexibility isn't necessarily desired by all; the stations on a rail network provide hysteresis which can keep otherwise unprofitable cities alive and even vibrant. New York beat out Boston because the Hudson was more navigable than the Charles, Boston Harbor's benefits notwithstanding. Chicago grew because it was at a confluence (literally!) of cheap transshipment points near farmland. Both cities do well even though their original reasons for existing are lost (neither are major freight hubs but have a lot of other transit links).

And rail, even underground rail, can be abandoned.

> Air routes are more flexible than rail routes.

Except for having to build an, uh, entire airport.

Very much true, but doesn't get at my point.

In fact airports can be / often are built far from urban areas where land is cheaper and space is available not just for the runways and terminals but parking, cargo etc. While you want rail terminals to be in densely connected locations which are more expensive and more difficult to network to.

But my point is that you can relatively easily fly from one airport to many others. For example, the under-construction California HSR goes from LA through Bakersfield in the Central Valley up to SF and then Sacramento. If Fresno in the Central Valley grew, you could expand its commuter airport and then it would be directly linked by air to Burbank, San Jose, San Franciso etc as well as points outside the state. While the cost of adding an HSR terminal in Fresno could be large, especially if the rail doesn't run nearby (as it happens a terminal appears to be planned in Fresno, but the point remains).

I'm still a big supporter of HSR but I recognize the trade offs.

Building an airport is only about 100 times cheaper than building a rail line.

The principal advantage of a train before airplane for me is that boarding a plane is a hour or so, while boarding a train is 5–10 minutes. Also, you can have a train much closer to the city (or right in the middle of it) than an airport. If hyperloop loses these advantages, I'd bet on airplanes.

Don't forget that on a plane you're literally packed like sardines and can only get up and move maybe once or twice. Flying is pretty miserable tbh.

The reason high speed rail doesn't happen is the same reason commuter rail doesn't happen. Rich people do not want poor people to be able to easily come to their neighborhoods. The whole suburban architecture of the U.S is specifically constructed to maintain this inaccessibility. The whole trend began in the 60s with "white flight" in cities like Detroit after race riots and has only intensified since.

There are several reasons more passenger rail doesn't happen.

Generally the passenger rail proposals are illegal because they fail some now 100+ year old laws on cost/benefit analysis originally enacted to throttle bankrupting the US from building water projects to make the deserts bloom when the US had lots of blooming land not in deserts. If you own some desert and can talk the Federal Government into a big water project to make the desert bloom, then you can get rich, but the US could go broke doing that.

Well, continually, any honest cost/benefit analysis dooms any Federal subsidies for passenger rail.

There was a big example in Baltimore: They built a subway. Big subsidies. The system was done but not quite carrying passengers yet. I went to a lecture on the economics. The cost/benefit solution, even counting the construction cost as $0.00? Sure: Brick up the openings of the subway and just f'get about it. Why? No way could ticket prices pay even for routine operating costs.

This neglects positive externalities, doesn't it? The NY Metro is economically vital but can't recoup its operating expenses from ticket sales, so it relies on taxes (and, unfortunately, a lot of debt). Nobody would say the MTA is exactly a model of a functioning subway system but there's no principle that says a subway can't be funded with taxes and tickets in combination.

Seems to me that the benefit to non-riders is simply that the cars those riders would be using aren't on the roads that they are using.

There is such a principle and even a law, cost/benefit analysis. And it doesn't consider your externalities. C/B analysis is especially simple for a train -- can estimate the benefit from the ticket revenue. If more is needed, then the train fails C/B analysis.

But for the NY and NYC MTA, they don't care because NYC needs the trains. For the rest of the country, they should and do care.

If you want my tax money for your new dreamy trains, then I will tell my representatives to vote no.

Schools, roads, parks and libraries don't pay for themselves, either. Why should municipal transit be held to a higher standard?

Public transport projects have to undergo cost benefit analyses first in Germany. They only get subsidized when the result is positive. This is rarely a problem.

Sadly, they often don’t even get subsidized when they have a 1:2 cost to profit ratio! (as the Stadt-Regional-Bahn Kiel showed!)

Looking at just ticket revenue seems shortsighted. A similar analyses would never be able to justify road construction and maintenance, which directly generate revenue only through gas taxes and traffic fines.

Urban centers are more productive than suburban sprawl due to network effects. Effective passenger rail allows higher density, resulting in a productivity dividend to everyone in the area.[1]

Economic analyses along these lines are often used to sell highway expansion -- since of course highways don't pay for themselves directly -- but research does not support claims that adding highway capacity has any significant economic impact.[2]

Research in this area:

[1] Transit service, physical agglomeration and productivity in US metropolitan areas [2014] Paper: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0042098013494426 with 38 citations: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=1548440332983701258...

[2] Highways and economic productivity [1997]: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0885412297011004... with 110 citations: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=4909135167466840847

> Looking at just ticket revenue seems shortsighted.

To me, not focusing on ticket prices looks in conflict with the law on cost/benefit analysis, inviting waste, and shortsighted.

For US cost/benefit analysis 101 (at one time I was forced to take a grad course in that and still have the text) the main idea was to add all the (A) costs, capital, operating, etc. and (B) benefits "to whosoever they may accrue". Then the benefits had to exceed the costs. Amazing concept.

So, if are building a national park in Wyoming, then the main benefits are to the visitors to the park. Tough to say that I get a benefit if I live in NY and never visit the park. For the benefit of the people who do visit the park, add up ticket revenue or, if want park admission to be free, estimate what the ticket revenue would be worth.

Then according to the law, the benefits have to exceed the costs. That was aimed first at water resource projects but was also applied to public parks and maybe dams, highways, etc.

For the Baltimore subway, the obvious benefits went to the riders. Then the obvious way to measure the benefit was to add up revenue from ticket sales. If want the subway to be free or run at a loss, then okay, but still have to add up the benefits and they have to exceed the costs. Well, IIRC for that subway, no way could benefits to the riders pay even for the on-going operating costs. So, the optimal cost/benefit solution was to brick up the entrances and shut down the project. The capital expense? Wasted money.

Saying that the subway would have a benefit because some employers could get some workers for less money, there would be fewer cars on the roads, etc. IIRC was far-fetched and didn't count.

Yes, we could do the dreamy analysis: Just imagine a really, secure, productive, beautiful city with lots of happy people with beautiful art, statues, vistas, boulevards, walking trails, nature walks, roof top organic vegetable gardens, pet friendly, free dial-a-ride transportation, free bicycles, fast, quiet, clean, safe subways, lakes, parks, free concerts at noon, dinner time, and evening, fireworks each Saturday night, all carbon-free, renewable energy, phosphate free detergents, CFC free air conditioning, "top of the line, totally non-polluting" electric taxis, group singing Kumbaya every afternoon, a norm of group hugs all the time, full gender equality, fluidity, and ambiguity, sidewalk cafes with no paper products, sidewalk artists, farmers' markets in the streets Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, an open air theater, a music and arts school, a performing arts center, lots of art galleries, free 24 x 7 walk-in medical clinics, etc. Just add up the benefits. Clearly they would be astronomical, beyond any costs. So, any and all cost/benefit analyses have already been passed! Let's get to work and pick the hand-formed, artisanal, multi-colored pastel paving stones for the sidewalks!

Long ago I got a strong impression that people who have that dream city in mind, in particular a lot of people in NYC, really hate private cars.

I live 70 miles north of Wall Street out in the sticks, deer in the backyard, etc., and I was torqued and pissed when for my car registration I had to pay a sur-tax to support the MTA, that is, some trains to NYC. I never ride those trains. If the trains need more money, then they should raise the ticket prices, that is, have the people who benefit from the trains pay what the trains cost, at least the on-going operating costs. It's far-feteched and wildly indirect to say that I get a benefit when I don't ride those trains.

But some people really like trains and other public transportation and really hate cars and private transportation. There are a lot of people like that in NYC.

I don't think that Kumbaya city is what the cost/benefit analysis had in mind, but I do get the strong sense that it is what a lot of people looking for Federal subsidies have in mind.

A highway and gas taxes? Sure, if gas taxes can pay for a highway, then the benefits clearly, necessarily do exceed the costs: People liked the driving enough to pay for the gas and the gas taxes, so no question.

The public transportation lovers, the train lovers, and the subsidy takers are all coming out of the woodwork again. I smell a fad, a bubble. IMHO, this too, will pass. We're not going to have a lot Federal subsidies for a lot of new passenger trains or Kumbaya cities springing up.

It's really simple: Anything like passenger trains mostly just do not work. Sure, NYC is built on top of a lot of subway lines, and they are now crucial to that city. So, that's NYC. So be it.

Why NYC? A good seaport between (A) the US Midwest, the Great Lakes, the Erie Canal, and the Hudson River and (B) much of the rest of the world, especially the US east coast and Europe. So, it was geography.

But, back to trains. The people have lots of origin-destination pairs so try to have lots of stops. Then on average at each stop usually take on or let off only a few people and for those few people have everyone else on the train wait and have the many tons of the train itself slow down, stop, and accelerate again. Bummer.

So, really, don't want so many little stops and, then, come up short on origin-destination pairs. E.g., my car is downstairs, under my family room, just off the basement. It's just a few steps to the car, and when I get back with groceries, etc., it's just a few steps to move the stuff from my car, an SUV, to my appropriate storage shelves for that stuff. When I start, accelerate, and stop my car, that's about 4000 pounds, not 100 tons, and only my time is involved, not also the time of hundreds of other people. Indeed, if I have much stuff, I back the SUV into the garage to save a few steps hauling the stuff. A train? To replace my SUV? A really bad joke. There is no way a train can stop close to all the houses in my neighborhood. That is, again, a train is very short on origin-destination pairs.

That's an old and very obvious and clear story: About 100 years ago, the US had passenger train service to essentially every cross-roads or larger in the whole country. But as soon as private cars were available, to heck with the horse drawn buckboard from the house to the train station, and to heck with the passenger trains. That is still the case.

Even if the trains were infinitely fast, to do well serving lots of origin-destination pairs, the delays for all the needed stops and connections would take too long.

The fact of life is that in nearly all the land area of the US, and for nearly everyone in the US not in one of the top 10 largest cities, the main means of people transportation is their private car, yes, on highways funded by gas taxes.

I know; I know; the Kumbaya city people want Federal subsidies to get rid of private cars, gasoline, suburbs, highways for private cars, etc. and have everyone in their own 500 square foot per person flat in a high rise in Kumbaya city with lots of trains and, soon, self-driving taxis, food delivery via drones, ordered by talking into a friendly AI appliance, etc. That fad, bubble will also soon go away.

Gee, and remember, we will need really good train service to Woodstock, NY!

Folks, again, follow the money: The people who want the subsidies want to give you a lot of dreamy stuff and then get your money and put a lot of it in their pockets. They want to have you dream about 100% all-natural, carbon-free, CFC-free, phosphate-free, anxiety-free, totally free, organic, pure, renewable, with no harm to the 100% all-natural, pure, pristine, delicate, sensitive, environment, the climate, the coral reefs, the whales, the birds, Antarctica, etc., or was that the last such scam? Uh, and the birds, well, there has been some compromise there!

Here is one: On the Great Lakes, have a nice paddle wheel boat. Big enough for several hundred people. Pick people up at some ports and take them on a beautiful, scenic evening cruise with all the best people.

Here's another idea: Notice that a lot of people want to have a private boat of 40 feet or so, say, on the Great Lakes. As everyone knows, to own such a boat usually has a cost per hour actually on the water too high to believe. So, have some such boats and rent them. Do a really nice job. E.g., have the boats in top condition and squeaky clean. Have very helpful staff of young people, usually college students off for the summer, in nice, crisp uniforms.

These ideas sound good, right? Make lots of money, right? Would be candidates for Federal subsidies based on cost/benefit analysis? Right?

Wrong! The ideas flopped. They lost money. Actually, the first idea, the cruise ship, did work for some years about 100 years ago and then trailed off. For whatever reason, those ideas didn't work.

For the free enterprise system, people learn that (A) there are lots of really nice products which, however, cost so much too few people can afford them and (B) lots of cheap products lots of people can afford except nearly no one wants them. Free enterprise has to make money in this world of (A) and (B). Public projects? With just cost/benefit analysis done in some dreamy ways, we're looking at a lot of projects that wouldn't work in free enterprise. I.e., the projects are losers in that charging what the real costs are, too few people would buy. It's their choice to buy or not, and too often they would not. But, with a public project, they have to pay for the thing whether they want to or not!

I have an idea: Why don't we get back to rationality and reality, wise up, and stop the scams and their waste and ripoffs? Remember Solyndra?

Or are we so rich we can ignore reality and rationality and indulge ourselves in goofy nonsense and dream of smoking funny stuff?

Can you make this more concise?

There are some people who really like passenger trains. They see passenger trains, including some really fast ones, in Europe and Asia and want such in the US. To get those trains, they want big bucks from the US Federal Government.

In the US, NYC is there and spends a lot of money on various public and commons projects. Passenger trains are an example.

We will not build another NYC, and how NYC spends money on trains, etc. does not generalize elsewhere in the US at all well.

For the US, for people, as they travel, for nearly all miles, say, commuting and shopping, to and from school, etc. there are lots of origin-destination pairs. Trains can't serve that many origin-destination pairs. First, can't lay that much track. Second, can't start, accelerate, and stop a 100 ton train with several hundred people just to pickup or let off just 1-4 people at a time, and that is what the many origin-destination pairs would require.

Also on a train, tough to carry all the stuff for shopping -- an SUV is much better. Also on a train, tough to carry all the stuff for a family visit to grandma's, either across the country or even just across town -- an SUV is much better. For a soccer mom with several kids, her own and some neighbors', an SUV is much better than a train for keeping all the kids, their sports equipment, etc. together.

As has been fully clear in the US since the end of WWII, nearly everywhere in the US, passenger trains flop.

Then, now there is another stake through the heart of passenger trains -- the TSA.

In nearly all the US, for nearly all their transportation, people prefer private cars and public roads paid for with gas taxes to trains. Otherwise they prefer airplanes.

Trump wants to do a lot on US infrastructure, but I don't think that will include more on passenger trains.

Are you suggesting that a metro system, like MTA or BART, is the same as a high speed rail? They serve fundamentally different purposes.

They are passenger trains. With rare exceptions, passenger trains in the US flop. High speed rail passenger trains will also flop.

It's simple: Again, once again, over again, yet again, one more time, in the US, with rare exceptions, passenger trains flop.

For passengers, too many of the reasons for the flop also hold for high speed trains, maglev trains, trains in vacuum tubes, trains above ground on long legs, trains underground, trains on old style rails, small trains, long trains, trains through big cities, trains between pairs of big cities, trains in areas such as the Rust Belt. They all flop.

Why? They are not very attractive to the passengers who too often would rather take their personal SUV or an airplane. They cost too much per passenger served.

Sorry 'bout that.

I've explained here over and over, long and short.

There are people now who just came out of the woodwork again, once more, as off and on going back at least to 1950 or so, and are pushing passenger trains in the US -- high speed, in tubes, on magnetic rails, on traditional tracks, between cities, through cities, in selected areas, say, the Midwest Rust Belt, between selected pairs of cities, e.g., LA and SF, etc. They are all trains. In the US, they will lose big bucks. The only way to build or operate them is to use the tax system to force people to pay for them.

So, now the people who want trains, and their Federal $$$$$ subsidies, see Trump's infrastructure push, smell $$$$$, are out of the woodwork, and are pushing passenger trains. One of the last things pushed was Solyndra. Before that it was blocking CFCs and ruining the AC in two of my cars. Before that it was blocking DDT and, thus, increasing a lot of disease from mosquitoes -- killed a lot of people.

There are some people who view their careers as selling projects. They come up with a long list of emotional reasons, get a lot of publicity, get donations, lobby for Federal subsidies, and that's their job. They just want to sell their projects. They want to be on your back and in your pocket. They want to use the legal and tax system to force you to do what otherwise you would not do. They use NYC and SF as big examples, but those examples don't apply elsewhere in the US. The examples from Europe, Japan, and China don't apply in the US.

Again, again, again, again, the US had passenger trains, from each little cross road to each other little cross road. After WWII, private cars on roads paid for by gas taxes killed the passenger trains for a really simple reason: People didn't like passenger trains and preferred their cars or airplanes. That's just the truth.

Why did people not like passenger trains? I've explained here over and over and over, short, long, medium, etc.

In simple, blunt, bottom line terms, for nearly all of the current US or anything like it, passenger trains are just total junk engineering ideas -- junk. The trains try to force a lot of people to share some one track, but in fact in reality nearly none of those people want to be on that track because it isn't close to where they started or where they want to be.

Again, once again, it doesn't matter how fast the trains are because even if the high speed trains were infinitely fast, they would still flop because they just can't serve enough origin-destination pairs. People would waste time waiting for the first train, waste time for each stop of that train (to stop and start a 100 ton train is EXPENSIVE), and waste time between each change of trains, and still usually they wouldn't really get within even a mile of where the heck they wanted to go. Due to all the time stopping, the revenue per hour for the train is too darned small.

Look, passenger trains are just some pie in the sky, some emotional appeal, to force you to buy something you don't want. The people forcing you are after your money.

I can see it now: Trump wants some infrastructure plan and tries to get it through Congress. Yup, I-84 and I-684 are really rough and need new surfaces; I-84 likely needs more lanes.

So, some train lobbying effort gets to some Congressman and explains how the train subsidies will help his campaign finances and jobs and votes in his district. So, as part of legislative compromise, (that's where you should either not cross the street then or run as fast as you can to cross the street but compromise and walk across slowly) the Congressman goes along with Trump's proposal but only if the proposal includes some train pork for the Congressman and his district. That's not new. As part of this, the lobbying effort understands, as they have for may other projects, e.g., CFCs and DDT, that they need a big PR effort to get the public ready for the tax dollars for these trains.

Here's an example of how this works: Most Congressmen are desperate for campaign funds. Well, there is Speaker of the House Paul Ryan. For the Republicans to elect him to that position, part of his job is to raise money for the campaigns of Republican Congressmen. Ryan is expected to raise ballpark $30 million a year. So, when see what Ryan does, e.g., dragging his feet here and there, making one absurd statement after another, here's what he is really doing: He is adding PR his donors like, the donors who provide the $30 million. So, he is at least pretending to push the interests of those donors. So, Ryan won't even pick up a pencil with less than six weeks of posturing about writing instruments. It's all 99 44/100% total BS, but that's how he gets his $30 million. Then, after a lot of such PR posturing and total BS, nonsense statements, with a lot of public support to do the right things, with a lot of poorly publicized deals, out of the view of the headlines, then, often, maybe, Ryan will be able to do the right, obvious thing he knew about right away at the beginning. That's much of why often it takes Congress so long to act. It's the effect of money on politics as we know far too well.

There is a solution, a really fast, overwhelmingly powerful, never fail, 900 pound gorilla solution: Inform the citizens and have them inform their representatives in Congress. Without fail, when enough phone calls and letters arrive in Congress to say that high speed rail is a scam, that will be the end of high speed rail, and no amount of special interest lobbying and campaign donations, free trips to Aruba, etc. will have any effect at all.

And, how to inform citizens? Sure, now, the Internet, e.g., HN. Why am I doing this? Good government. I'm not being paid. I'm taking my time, getting down voted, etc. to shine a bright light on the scam.

Since 99+% of HN readers should agree with me, I should win. So far, I'm losing.

Gee, high speed rail is just so dreamy!!!

Here I'm calling BS, flim-flam, fraud, pork barrel, money wasting, subsidy, pay-off, kick-back, force you to buy something you don't want scam. I don't like scams. Fewer than 1% of US citizens should like it. Wise up: You are being had.

Such scams have happened too often in the past. Maybe with the Internet, we can cut down on the scams.

Recall the recent Sharyl Attkisson book and statement: IIRC, "Essentially everything you read in the media was put there by someone with a special interest who wants to influence your opinion." So, these scams via the media are not just the exceptions but the rule, the usual thing. Sure, in the media, we recognize the ads except Sharyl Attkisson is saying that essentially all the rest is also ads.

Well, here I'm not running ads. I've explained the passenger rail scam. If you can't understand, then that's sad for our country.

You're calling rail a scam (a system that works marvelously in Europe and Japan for example) and saying that the "rail industry" is out for your tax dollars, but.... did you forget about the massive highway construction industry and automotive industry?

My view is that the auto industry has long and usually paid for itself as people buy cars (there was the 2008 bailout). For the highways, my understanding is that the Federally funded ones are paid for from the Highway Trust Fund which gets the Federal part of gasoline taxes. IIRC (I don't have good data) is that that fund is a favorite for raiding for money for other projects, maybe even trains.

So, I don't see cars as a scam. Passenger trains? Yes. Cars? No.

Again: can you make this more concise? I really tuned out when I saw this wall of text, and I didn't see my question answered in the first sentence or two before you went into your exposition (in fact, it seems you ignored my question).

I was astoundingly "concise" and answered your specific question in my first, short sentence:

You asked

> Are you suggesting that a metro system, like MTA or BART, is the same as a high speed rail? They serve fundamentally different purposes.

and my answer started with

> They are passenger trains.

That's the answer directly to your question, in the first sentence and just four words. So, the answer is right there, right up front, the first thing, nicely "concise", in just four words.

Apparently you did not see those four words as answering your question. Well, then, my four word answer was too "concise". So, I went on with what you call a "wall of text" and explained just why being a "passenger train" is the problem, different "purposes" or not, fast or slow, long or short, etc. The answer to your question is right there, short, concise, right at the beginning, in just four words and, then, if that is too short, with lots of detail.

I typed it in. All you have to do is read it. If the four word answer is too "concise", then read the "wall of text".

You compound error on error here, so I'll just focus on the first:

To me, not focusing on ticket prices looks in conflict with the law on cost/benefit analysis, inviting waste, and shortsighted.

It's not.

Public goods, a term of art in economics, refer to those for which market transactions alone fail to capture the full benefits. There may be additional factors as well including nonrivalry or nonexcludability. Even on a transit system where it seems that the beneficiaries are well-defined -- passengers -- there are nonexcludable beneficiaries: drivers who experience less congestion, the families of workers or children who can commute by transit rather than requiring private auto trips, employers who have an increased employee pool, retailers who benefit by increased foot traffic and patronage, reduced air pollution, etc., etc., etc.

So, no, farebox revenue, of and by itself, doesn't tell the full story.

The basic principles were layed out some time ago:

"The third and last duty of the sovereign or commonwealth is that of erecting and maintaining those public institutions and those public works, which, though they may be in the highest degree advantageous to a great society, are, however, of such a nature that the profit could never repay the expense to any individual or small number of individuals, and which it therefore cannot be expected that any individual or small number of individuals should erect or maintain. The performance of this duty requires, too, very different degrees of expense in the different periods of society."

-- Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, Book V, Chapter 1, Part 3.

https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Nations/Book_...

I did respond to that. I explicitly mentioned the idea of helping employers by making it easier for workers to get to the employer's shop.

Much of the rest I wrote is a parody of your ideas.

NYC is there and exists, and we have to live with it. But what is in practice and reality necessary in the commons, public, etc. in NYC need not establish a principle to apply elsewhere. I explained why NYC is there -- it's some geography. Maybe that geography is still important; maybe not. But that geography is rare: In the whole east US, there is about Boston, NYC, Philly, Baltimore, DC, Charlotte, and New Orleans. And NYC has the advantage that it is not blocked by the mountains that run from about Maine to Florida. That is, due to the Erie Canal, NYC has a water path to the US Midwest.

NYC is there. It's done. It's not going away, and we're not going to build another one. That passenger trains and other public and commons expenditures are important in NYC does not extend to the rest of the country.

Curious that Adam Smith said some of that stuff.

But I tried to indicate that cost/benefit analysis as in the US law I studied does not include the highly indirect benefits you mentioned.

To me, you include so much that (A) no person or government process would ever be able to sort through and decide what to include versus reject and (B) the way would be wide open for way too much public spending as in my Kumbaya city parody.

Something happened in the DC Beltway: For some years, people kept trying to figure out the best routes. Finally it became clear that the routes didn't much matter because of the years between when the route was announced and when it was finished. During those years, lots of apartment and office buildings and shopping centers would locate to take advantage of the Beltway as soon as it was finished.

Well could do something similar with trains: Build them and let people move their apartment, office buildings and shopping, etc. to conform to the trains.

Maybe could go to some big, low density area of the US, just put in lots of trains, put up lots of buildings, and then let people move in. That is, design the area for trains instead of private cars. My understanding is that China has tried such things and the effort flopped.

Net, for the present US, passenger trains don't work. The main reason is that the way people live now, they need far too many origin-destination pairs, and trains can't serve that many. Private cars and highways can; trains can't.

We're not going to redesign and rebuild everything around trains or anything else. Instead we are going to be incremental. Where there is a need, business will try to find ways to fill it. An example is Amazon based on the Internet, Moore's law, and the Interstate highways. Based on the Internet, more people will be able to work from home and not commute. Maybe there will be a role for drones. Maybe there will be less commuting for education.

Sorry, net, in the US, once again, as has been fully clear since the end of WWII, passenger trains will flop. In particular, I don't see either Trump or Congress putting up the cash to change that.

The US does a lot with trains. E.g., recently Buffett bought BN. It carries coal, lots of coal. IIRC, trains are carrying lots of stuff for fracking.

Trump is doing a lot to get coal going again in the US. Then trains will have to be involved. The mine that just opened is for metallurgical coal. Okay, then, that coal will be used for making steel, and no doubt trains will also carry the steel. And Trump wants US steel to do better -- more trains. Generally Trump wants more US manufacturing: Okay, likely both inputs and outputs will be carried heavily by, right, trains. Trump wants to export coal: Okay, then, as that coal is loaded on ships, likely it will come from trains.

But, passenger trains and Kumbaya city? Nope.

I'll stick to the first error: "That passenger trains and other public and commons expenditures are important in NYC does not extend to the rest of the country."

False.

You write too much. Focus your fire and thoughts.

It's not false, and you didn't write enough to say why it's false. Or, NYC needs subways. And, for commuters to NYC, they need trains that also connect with the subways. E.g., for a while my wife was working in Manhattan. Well, I put her on the 7:33 AM out of Chappaqua and picked her up there in the evening.

That situation just does not apply anywhere else in the US unless you insist on SF.

"In 2012, the New York City Metropolitan Statistical Area generated a gross metropolitan product (GMP) of over US$1.33 trillion, while the Combined Statistical Area[5] produced a GMP of over US$1.55 trillion, both ranking first nationally by a wide margin and being roughly equivalent to the GDP of South Korea. [6] "

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_New_York_City

Citing: "U.S. Metro Economies (note CSA 2012 GMP total includes sum of New York, Bridgeport, New Haven, Allentown, Trenton, Poughkeepsie, and Kingston MSA 2012 GMP values cited)" (PDF). IHS Global Insight, The United States Conference of Mayors, and The Council on Metro Economies and the New American City. November 2013. p. 9 through 18 in Appendix Tables. Retrieved July 29, 2014

"The economy of the State of New York is reflected in its gross state product in 2015 of $1.44 trillion"

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_New_York

Which is to say that New York State absent the NYCMSA is 0.11 trillion.

Or: NYCMSA is 92%+ of the economic activity of New York State.

The NYCMSA also exceeds the GDP of all but three of the remaining United States, and is nearly 10% of the overall total (California and Texas exceed it). It is greater than that of the smallest 18 states, combined.

As you were saying?

Interesting.

I was saying that at this point, NYC does need trains. And, suspicions confirmed, NYC is awash in money to pay for them, and for the new construction after 9/11, for the big water tunnels, for some subway extensions, for whatever renovation they want to do to Grand Central Terminal, and, really, for whatever they want to do to the Metro or whatever it is called to Upstate NY, Connecticut, Long Island, etc.

But, for all that money, recently I, who never ride trains, at least have not in about 15 years and rarely forever, had to subsidize the commuter trains to NYC. Bummer.

So, as you showed, NYC really should be able to pay for its own trains.

But: For a while nearly year 2000, I was working in the Wall Street area, that is, 70 miles south of me. I found that I could drive my car, park, and get to my office in less elapsed time than the trains took just to get me from my nearest station to Grand Central. Between gas, parking, and care maintenance, I spent a lot of money on the commuting, but the trains were not cheap, either. And I would still need my car to get to/from my nearest train station and, then, need a subway or taxi to get me to my office.

That's a curious data point. Sure, if everyone tried cars, then the roads would get clogged. Still it's curious that for all the screaming about traffic jams, my personal car was faster.

Fine, at this point, NYC has no alternative but to make trains and subways work, and they do. And taxis.

But, sure, NYC still needs roads, e.g., the 18 wheel trucks that queue up outside of NYC waiting for the selected time to drive into the city to pickup/deliver. E.g., I have a friend who killed 5000 hogs a day in Ohio and each day drove some number of 18 wheel trucks, his, with 40,000 pounds a truck, of fresh pork to spots in NYC and Manhattan. So, NYC still needs roads.

Here is a biggie point I omitted: Really, outside of a few big cities, nearly everyone needs a personal car. Then, for some one trip, when there might be a choice of what mode of transportation to use, for the car the cost is just the marginal cost for that trip since they still need the car, no matter how often they take a train. If the marginal cost of using the car is less than the train ticket, for the full cost of the train, and if the car is more convenient, then people will be using their car. That point is one of the main stakes in the heart of trains everywhere but NYC where the trains are necessary because NYC at this point has no choice.

And now there is a new stake in the heart of trains -- the TSA.

There is another biggie point: Last night I did two Google searches

Amtrak losses

Acela losses

I found lots of articles on lots of losses. Amtrak is for the whole country; they actually have some trains coast to coast. Acela is for the NE or some such and supposed to be fast? For Amtrak, apparently right along they have been getting about $1.5 billion from Congress. And from what I saw, Acela is also losing money.

These losses add fuel to the fire that in the US, passenger trains can't pay for themselves with ticket prices. And, for Amtrak, much of the track they use is not dedicated to Amtrak but is also used by other trains, including freight trains. So, some of the high speed rail proposals will have to build and maintain their own tracks, vacuum tubes, etc. thus further increasing their costs, both capital and operating. Obvious: High speed passenger trains will be big money losers.

Outside of NYC, passenger trains have been dying since just after WWII. They are not coming back.

So, you're finally getting to the point of noticing things and raising some interesting points. A few of which I was hoping you might turn up.

We're also getting pretty late in the stage of an HN discussion. I don't know where else you comment on things, but I'm active on Reddit, and run a sub there. I've just created an open thread post: https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/6l5nfd/open_th...

Some of the points you've raised:

* Failures of composition: what's logical for a single agent isn't beneficial on net for society as a whole.

* When you're driving into Manhattan, you are directly benefitting by the existence of the rail network as it reduces the congestion of the roadways you're on. That is, if your time, or transit flexibility requirements, make rail unattractive, you are an external beneficiary of that rail network. (Positive externality.) Ergo: you should pay for it.

* "NYC's GDP dwarfs that of the state as a whole, so it should pay for its own upkeep." Interesting perspective, one which could be further discussed.

* Not made, but possibly imputed: NYC's notional financialised GDP exceeds that of rural districts ONLY BECAUSE of favourable consideration NYC has been able to impose on the very notions of property, market price, and relative surplus value capture. You haven't gone there, but I will. It's an interesting argument and turns many economic core/periphery arguments on their head.

* NYC is a capability centre whose benefits spill out over not only all of New York State, but much of the US and world. To what extent does this justify various forms of tax in support of NYC?

* Transportation and explicit vs. implicit subsidies. Again: there's a vast literature on this topic of which you're evidencing little familiarity. I'm not saying you haven't read it, though you're not arguing in a way which suggests you have. Going back to Smith again, largely Book V, which deals with such matters, though I could point to many other elements -- the justifications for creation of canals, railroads, postal roads, post offices, libraries, schools, public universities, the aviation industry, highway systems, and publicly-managed ports, all come to mind. Simon Winchester's The Men Who United the States addresses many of these elements, though not from a principally economic perspective.

Keep in mind that the notion of trans-continental or inter-continental travel occurring within hours rather than days, weeks, months, or years is one that's only about 60 years old.

And again: if you want to continue this discussion, I invite you to Reddit, where it's easier to keep an exchange alive.

I up-voted your post because whether or not I disagree, I can't stand people coming by and doing drive-by down votes on posts like this where you've clearly thought about and put work into a response. Thanks for that.

I don't take public transportation, I'm a car-commuter. But I have an issue with something you said and it irked my quite a bit. You called those riding the trains and what not "subsidies" but you don't look at our car culture and have the same view. This befuddles me. Highway construction is every bit the subsidy that public transportation construction is, perhaps more so. Not to mention the other impacts, environmental or otherwise, that cost us dearly. Whether it's the harm to the environment, the higher cost paid to maintain a car and the infrastructure to drive it on, or the fact that car accidents are the leading cause of death for our country's youth, picking on public transportation as a subsidy is not a fair characterization.

> Highway construction is every bit the subsidy that public transportation construction is, perhaps more so.

Well, first, my understanding is that the Federally funded roads are paid for from the Highway Trust Fund, that gets gas taxes and commonly shows a profit, that is, gets used for other than highways, but I don't have good data.

Second, on this thread the beginnings of this was cost/benefit analysis. There if benefits of roads exceed the costs, then it's okay to spend general tax money on the roads.

The reason I'm screaming subsidy is that I don't believe that passenger trains can pass traditional cost/benefit analysis anywhere in the US except in NYC, maybe SF, and that's about it. Or, for NYC they will do what they do because in some sense NYC needs it, to heck with cost/benefit analysis. But recently I did have to pay a surtax to support the NY MTA when I never use it -- apparently they are not charging enough for their tickets. I'm not part of the unique NYC thingy so should not have to pay for the MTA for NYC.

My view of the trains being pushed now is that no way will they pass cost/benefit analysis unless count all kinds of distant benefits that traditional analysis never did. So, to me, the only way the trains could roll would be just flat out subsidies taken from people by force via the tax laws. Bummer.

I'm less concerned about the bad aspects of private cars than you are.

I regard the trains as a scam intended to make a few people rich from money from the Federal government from tax money. E.g., supposedly Musk's businesses have gotten $1 B or more, or was it $5+ B. It's a lot. To me, Musk is sucking on the public teat.

You're putting your car before your horse. The reason they don't pass this cost benefit analysis is because we continue to build and subsidize road construction, gasoline, and cars. If you keep subsidizing that, then turn around and look at public transportation and sneer at it as if it is somehow something that is a subsidy, of course you can never do an appropriate cost/benefit analysis. Not to mention that instead of fixing the issue, we keep building roads. That never solves the problem.

I'm not familiar with your particular situation or how the NYC metro works, but typically we pay taxes for all sorts of things we don't use, and some thing we indirectly benefit from.

> I'm less concerned about the bad aspects of private cars than you are.

Which I find bizarre. Why are you so concerned that you might be subsidizing trains, but unconcerned about the environmental impact, the suburban sprawl and resource drainage, the insane amount of money spent purchasing and maintaining cars and highways, and the thousands of people who die every year in car accidents?

> I regard the trains as a scam intended to make a few people rich from money from the Federal government from tax money.

Well then you can just level that criticism at everything so unless you're an anarchist (and I am, actually), this isn't really a useful comment. Plus, if you think trains are a "scam" that are somehow screwing the American taxpayer, why would you not level the same criticism at the auto or fuel industry?

> unconcerned about the environmental impact, the urban sprasubwl and resource drainage, the insane amount of money spent purchasing and maintaining cars and highways, and the thousands of people who die every year in car accidents?

We could go on and on about that. Sure, ballpark, first cut, you are correct. But I don't see a better alternative.

And for the costs, IIRC, and again, this is not my job and I don't have good data, nearly cars pay for themselves from when people buy the cars, buy gas, pay for maintenance and insurance, when the gas taxes are used to build the roads, etc.

> environmental impact

From cars and truck on the roads, I'm no longer much concerned.

> suburban sprawl

I like the suburbs, much better than living in a large city.

> resource drainage

I'm not very concerned: We're using iron, aluminum, concrete, and oil. Someday we will run out of oil, and then we will make it from electricity, water, and CO2. We can recycle the iron and aluminum -- IIRC the aluminum is valuable enough to be eagerly recycled now. Concrete? It needs mostly only calcium carbonate, that is, lime stone. The planet is totally awash in lime stone. And the concrete on the roads can be recycled. Some people are concerned about concrete because making cement from lime stone releases CO2. My understanding is that CO2 from human sources is tiny compared with what comes from volcanoes.

> purchasing and maintaining

Yup, it's expensive, one of the major expenses, likely second only to housing. But I don't know of an alternative unless we are all going to live in small apartments in high rise buildings in dense cities. And we will still need roads for trucks, taxis, and likely busses.

But, a lot of people would rather live in the suburbs and drive a personal car and are willing to pay the costs. If they are in fact paying the costs, then fine with me.

> the thousands of people who die every year in car accidents

I don't like that. But I've driven maybe 800,000 miles without an injury. As a teenager I had some minor accidents, but the main cause was ice and no one was hurt and no cars were seriously damaged. In some parts of the country, when the roads are covered with glare ice, don't drive for 3-4 days.

I just bought auto insurance in NY: It was $370 for the year. That's a good measure of the costs of the accidents and injuries. Medical insurance for the rest of health care is much, much higher. So, auto accidents are not a biggie for medical problems. The old biggie was smoking, but we've made progress on that. Now a biggie is obesity. IIRC, then it's heart disease and cancer. My parents dies of smoking, via heart disease and cancer. Without the smoking the cancer would not have been there. Same for the heart disease except eventually Dad would have had that but now some simple pills for about $0.50 a day fixes that quite nicely. We're making progress in medicine, but, still, that $370 a year figure shows that the medical side of cars is tiny compared with the rest of medicine.

Cars are better than they used to be: Tires used to be gone in 10,000, 20,000 miles. Now it's common to get 70,000 miles. Brakes, ball joints, they last much longer. The engines are much cleaner due to electronic ignition and fuel systems and, thus, last much longer, commonly over 200,000 miles. We're getting more lifetime out of U-joints, wheel bearings, shocks, etc. My SUV has over 200,000 miles and the original shocks -- Bilsteins, from Chevy. Also original springs, suspension bushings, and ball joints. For much of the car interiors, the synthetic fabrics are nearly indestructable. In my 200,000 mile SUV, a lot of the interior looks new. And cars are getting better still, e.g., better protection against corrosion.

The US is a big country. Cars are working great. I see no better alternative. Passenger trains? NYC and DC for commuters. Secret? Both were awash in money and could buy whatever they wanted.

> We could go on and on about that. Sure, ballpark, first cut, you are correct. But I don't see a better alternative.

Well there is an alternative. You build more dense, mixed-use developments where people can walk, bike, or if needed take the bus to where they need to go. Have rentals like Car 2 Go and Lyft and whatnot. Trains aren't the only solution, they are part of a suite of available solutions. I don't advocate getting completely rid of cars, but building 6-lane highways is simply unsustainable and undesirable.

> And for the costs, IIRC, and again, this is not my job and I don't have good data, nearly cars pay for themselves from when people buy the cars, buy gas, pay for maintenance and insurance, when the gas taxes are used to build the roads, etc.

Ok so let's say that everybody pays for their cars and whatever. Yes you pay for the maintenance and yes you pay for the gas. I'll even submit that you pay for the tax and that directly funds roads. My question to you now is, whether or not that is an economically justifiable policy to maintain. Let's say you buy a cheap new car at like $15,000. Ok, so now you're out that money, + interest. Now you have to pay out of pocket for tires, gas, and insurance. All of that money is, as far as I'm concerned, wasted, because if we zoned better we could have situations where you work close to where you live, and you don't have to drive everywhere. Now what are you saving? All of that cost. On top of that, we haven't even broached the subject of teenager deaths (let along just general destruction of life and property from accidents) and the hospital costs associated with those accidents, nor have we discussed the health impact of pollution, sitting on your fat lazy ass everyday, nor have we touched on the environmental impact from extracting all these resources that aren't needed. You sitting here saying "I'm unconcerned" is kind of alarming. How can you be unconcerned with any of this?

> But I don't know of an alternative unless we are all going to live in small apartments in high rise buildings in dense cities. And we will still need roads for trucks, taxis, and likely busses.

The problem is that you have this picture of what urban means, (small apartment and idk, what else?) when it's not the case. I have no desire to live in a shoebox either. Yet I still live in the middle of a downtown in a large city in the US. How can you reconcile this? The fact is that urban sprawl is almost as undesirable as suburban sprawl. But mixed-use neighborhoods solve for both. Check out this TED talk: https://www.ted.com/talks/jeff_speck_the_walkable_city

> The US is a big country. Cars are working great. I see no better alternative.

Than you simply aren't thinking. I don't mean to sound rude here but it's pretty easy to imagine a far superior solution to gigantic unused parking lots, fiery deaths and destruction, and 45 minutes (each way) drives stuck in traffic. Why is it that every other first-world country on the planet can get along fine with public transportation, but we can't? If you want to say "America is so big" my reply to you is good, and we should keep the open space open for better uses than gigantic, poorly built homes. You can have the best of both worlds. Hell you can even still have a car. But you cannot have a world where everybody does the single-occupant commute to their 9-5 everyday, not for long at least.

> Passenger trains? NYC and DC for commuters. Secret? Both were awash in money and could buy whatever they wanted.

Hmm. I wonder why that's the case?

Also, I don't dispute that you are paying $370/year for car insurance, but you're far below average anywhere in the country, and nearly 4x cheaper than the average for New York. If you have any contrary stats by all means post them, but this is like the first thing I found: https://www.valuepenguin.com/average-cost-of-insurance

I have first-hand exposure to this and I mislike how public transit, or even just transit, is being finger-pointed for "Homeless Apocalypse In The Neighborhood".

I've seen projects for extending train lines and bus routes literally coming to complete halt because residents were defensive and paranoid about the demographics of people that would be potentially visiting their area. There's a general consensus in much of America, even among the working class, that walking and using public transportation is a sign of personal failure.

If you haven't seen it, this reading of Dr Frankel''s letter by a Marin supervisor criticizing public transit is a pretty raw and uncensored expression of the disgust and hatred felt toward thr lower classes who depend on public transit in America: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sfO8CCMmHjA

Wealth is currently exiting the suburbs and going back toward the megacities now.

Installing "high speed" rail that's less than 200mph in the US today is like installing 6MB copper DSL and calling it a win.

Notice developing economies are going wireless/fiber and skipping the "legacy" generation, the US should be doing the same with MagLev/hyperloop.

The issue is we spend our money policing the world/blowing up countries then paying to rebuild them. If we weren't so hell-bent on global hegemony we could spend more on infrastructure at home.

The really stupid part is that US military spending is so disproportionate you could do both.

A 25% cut in the US military would leave around 165bn for infrastructure and they'd still be spending more than the next 4 countries.

$165 billion is about 4% of federal spending, so if people think it is so important they could cut everything except defense and easily come up with the money.

But if we cut military, they'd then be much more fiscally responsible and not have to admit that they'd "lost" trillions of dollars that they can't account for every, oh, decade or so.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/08/23/politics/us-army-audit-account...

They did not in fact admit they "lost" trillions. It's a fair criticism of their mediocre accounting, however they did not lose trillions of dollars, nor are trillions of dollars unaccounted for. That part isn't even actually being disputed by that ignorant CNN article. Trillions of dollars have not been properly audited, which is not the same as that entire sum simply being magically missing.

That article is rehashing the same bogus premise that has been thrown around for decades. Here's how it works:

https://www.metabunk.org/debunked-8-5-trillion-missing-from-...

https://davidlandy.net/no-the-pentagon-didnt-lose-8-5-trilli...

Basically: within $N trillion in spending, there is a combination of non-audits and accounting irregularities, so therefore CNN throws up a click-bait article claiming the entire amount of spending is unaccounted for.

Pretty idiotic when you consider the sums being claimed vs the known expenditures in question. The premise is: every dollar that wasn't audited was stolen; logically, even if one were to assume theft (etc) happened, it's likely to be a dramatically smaller sum of the whole.

NASA is about 0.5% of federal spending.

The total education spend is 3%.

So you could double spending on education and nasa and still pocket savings...

By cutting the US military by 25%.

Just an example.

The US has an economy larger than the next four largest military countries combined. An economy that is hyper dependent on the global economy functioning well and trade flowing unimpeded.

I happen to agree with slashing the US military, however your premise is incorrect. It's also worth noting that China aggressively lies about their military spending - under counting - and has been doing that for decades. The US is also now spending less than Russia per dollar of GDP.

Further, the $165 billion wouldn't accomplish anything in terms of infrastructure, or healthcare, or anything else. For example, take a look at the estimate that California Democrats recently ended up with for their single-payer system (it's so expensive to do in the US, it'd instantly bankrupt California; not even a small, somewhat well run state like Vermont can pull it off). You can't even fix California's infrastructure problems for $165 billion per year. Right now, with the US budget what it is, you'd need more like a $400 billion cut to the military to even scratch the surface (we have nukes, it'd realistically be feasible, but we'd have to dramatically disengage from dealing with Russia in Europe and China in Asia, requiring those regions to significantly lift their military spending).

This is not 165 billion to fix infrastructure, this is 165B to fix mass transit and that's plenty when you consider the leverage loans can provide it's closer to 500B per year.

Second US gets almost nothing per dollar from it's military spending due to inefficiencies. Slashing the budget for a few years is a critical step to separate the useful from the useless spenind. And realistically a 70% cut followed by a slow ramp up would eliminate vast amounts of redundant waste, and reduce many long term obligations. But, that waste is making people rich and 'bringing home the bacon' making such cuts untenable.

The $500 billion you're quoting for mass transit, would build high speed rail for California, Texas, and maybe a few states on the East Coast. That's it. Might cover 15% of the US population.

> Second US gets almost nothing per dollar from it's military spending due to inefficiencies

Most US military spending is on human soldiers, not on weapons programs. The waste you're referring to is a few tens of billions of dollars per year. It's not hundreds of billions. Your premise of somehow saving a lot of money by reducing waste, doesn't pan out under any scrutiny accordingly. Unless your plan is to slash hundreds of thousands of soldiers and their associated costs (even if we close half our foreign bases, which would save tens of billions of dollars, we would then need to significantly increase the spending on our domestic base capabilities to handle those soldiers; or we have to dramatically slash our soldier numbers).

It's 500 billion per year, 5 trillion in a decade. Mass high speed rail in Texas is a stupid waste relative to places where lots of people actually live. North East cost has 17% of the US population on less than 2% of the US's total land. After you build high speed rail in that area extending it to that area city's will want to be on the network just as the US highway system was so popular. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_megalopolis So extending to some of these other regions https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_megalopolis#/media...

There's nowhere you're going to get $500 billion per year for anything. Entitlement costs are skyrocketing and are going to accelerate, we can't even afford how much SS / Medicare / Medicaid are going to cost in the next 20 years as is, much less find $500 billion in new spending. If the funding source is to be cutting the US military from $600x billion to $100x billion, that isn't even worthy of a serious discussion (if we slashed it in half to $300x billion - which might be the absolute minimum we need to maintain a standing capable army (it'd be about 1.5% of GDP equivalent a few years out) - that half might plug the entitlement hole in the coming decades, that's it).

If you build a house you take out a loan. The same is generally true of rail networks.

As I said in another comment we could slash Medicare spending by 40+% without reduicing care. But, as you did not bother to read my comment I can't help but think your being disingenuous.

PS: I don't run the country so any change I or you suggest has the same problem of never going to be implemented. Stopping rational discussion at that point kills all political discussions period.

> As I said in another comment we could slash Medicare spending by 40+% without reduicing care.

Concluding disingenuous is more than a stretch. I'm reading & responding to more than a dozen posts in this same thread.

Claiming we could reduce Medicare spending by 40% is a very, very dramatic claim. We could reduce general healthcare spending by a similar amount: the consequences of doing so are profound, involving vast job loss, pay cuts, and tax base loss. What's your near-term fix for that immense dislocation that would take decades to play out? Just tell the millions of people that will be negatively affected by it to suck it up and deal with it? Or do you plan to significantly boost welfare programs, unemployment benefits, retraining spending, etc. - and how do you plan to pay for that (cutting Medicare spending by 40% wouldn't even balance the budget deficit, which is set to balloon massively due to entitlement costs)?

The disingenuous was in reference to the 500 billion, number provided. when you consider the leverage loans can provide it's closer to 500B per year.

Your government funded health care budget alone would be enough to pay for a free-at-the-point-of-use system for the entire population like the UK.

Yes, all the inefficiencies would have to go, and that would mean people would have to get jobs that are more efficient and produce more bang for buck. That's life.

Maybe if the entire population was like the UK this might work - Americans are rather less healthy in general - and one of the "inefficiencies" the UK system does away with is paying for treatments that offer particularly bad value for money, so you'd have to tell a bunch of cancer patients that tough, they're not getting chemo, now go and die quietly, and even then it's not clear whether UK levels of cost efficiency are even possible in the US.

NICE is no different to insurance companies when it comes to hiding the value of a given drug. For cancer patients not given chemo, you're thinking of the US when your credit card bounces and you get dragged out of hospital.

I'm not aware of any cases when people are denied chaemotheropy on the NHS, yet I am aware of people in the Us struggling to pay $50k a year for something as basic as insulin.

>>Mass high speed rail in Texas is a stupid waste relative to places where lots of people actually live.

The Texas triangle (Houston, Dallas, Austin and San Antonio) has a combined metropolitan population of 17 million.

Compare that to the 49+ million people in the northeast which would take about the same rail to cover and 17 million really is small. The problem is it's a triangle which means the maximum distance someone travels is minimized while still needing a lot of rail. You could make it a little shorter by making the trips take longer which kind of defeats the purpose. Further, there is not a lot to directly connect to it.

However, once the northeast networks expands eventually adding Texas would be reasonable, just not from day 1.

You can leave Austin and San Antonio out and still have 13 million people on the Dallas/Houston straight line.

And keep in mind that the terrain between Dallas and Houston is basically all flat and sparsely populated, so building rail there would be a lot cheaper than the northeast.

Rail only going to a fewe small city's would be underutilized. Ballpark 1/3 of the people going from A to B using high speed rail and you need a lot of people going from A to B. However, if B is on the way to C and people from A and B also go to C... etc you start to see massive network effects.

Sure, if Texas wants to spemd their money go for it, but this would be a relative ware of federal funds.

Two thirds of the country live between D.C. and New York and in California. Making high speed just in those places would do a massive amount of good for the country

The Air Force and Navy definitely crank down their service numbers during "peace" time to invest in weapons systems instead. The lead time on ships & planes is so much longer than sailors & airmen through bootcamp that it makes sense. Plus they stick with a pretty low deployment cadence that could easily be cranked up if necessary.

The big problem is that whole categories of the military budget are waste. They are job programs in the shape of a weapon, but are overkill in our current asymmetric wars and likely useless against an equal adversary. The LCS & F-35 are trillions of dollars in waste.

Even when you are talking about a decent system, the internal level of waste is insane. I was an engineer for nuclear submarines. We were cited as an example for all other programs because we were on time and under budget. There was still a waste in every direction I could see.

I think things would get better with a switch to fixed priced contracts instead of cost plus. It requires the service to nail down their requirements up front, but at least you get the cost incentives right. Until then, the saying "first time half time, second time overtime" was pretty apt.

California is already 15% of the US pop.

I feel I should point out that if you decrease soldier numbers and take their salaries and invest it in infrastructure, that's quite a lot of open jobs doing work that is potentially doing more to strengthen the country.

I don't know how many troops one needs to defend the country and fulfill our obligations abroad (though I wish it were zero), but a military job lost surely pays for a civilian job building infrastructure. Especially considering overhead for the two relatively, the civilian job could certainly even pay better.

I'm sure there is a balance in there, but I don't think jobs would be one -- rather readiness requirements alone. And god knows I'm not qualified to guess as to that one, but it does seem likely we're going a bit overboard at present.

Russia is spending more of GDP, US 3.3%, Russia 5.3%, but Russia's GDP is so low that US spending is still nearly nine(!) times higher in actual dollars [1]. A Russian spent dollar probably gives more bang for the buck, but US military spending is still very high.

The single-pay system can be made to work. Others make it work, and a lot cheaper, but you have to accept that you need change. US health care is imo absurdly expensive and not that good (I have experienced it). But that discussion seem to always fall into the realm of doctrine rather than what is good and possible when it comes under discussion.

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

> A Russian spent dollar probably gives more bang for the buck, but US military spending is still very high.

You of course didn't support that claim at all. Most US military spending goes to soldier-related costs. How do you propose to slash that given how dramatically higher the US median wage is compared to Russia? Other than of course to perhaps cut the number of US soldiers in half.

> The single-pay system can be made to work. Others make it work, and a lot cheaper

Of course it can work. It can't work with US costs what they are. You need to go tell US nurses they have to take a 1/3 pay cut, to match up with what nurses in France and Germany are making. Then you need to go tell radiologists that they have to take a 70% pay cut to match up with French radiologists. Then you have to go tell pharma they're getting a 2/3 cut. Then you have to tell average hospital workers they're getting a 20% pay cut. Then you have to close 1/3 of all hospitals. Then you have to substantially expand wait times to match eg Canada, aka rationing the care. Then you have to tell hospital admin they're getting a 50% cut in their budget. Then you have to fire 500,000 people that are employed directly or indirectly in the health insurance industry. Then you have to slash the payouts for all sorts of highway robbery prices in medtech / devices / supplies related to the healthcare industry, which will can hundreds of thousands of more employees. You have to successfully adjust all of that, lower the costs, then figure out how to create new economic growth with the cost savings to re-employ all those lost jobs, wages, taxes (all that lost income tax, which will shoot a hole in the side of social security & medicare/medicaid).

IE you have to find a trillion dollars in savings across dozens of economic segments. Which is another way of saying: a lot of people are going to lose a lot of jobs and income. It's an extraordinarily complicated and expensive problem to resolve without rattling the entire economy to its core.

Oh yeah, then you have to dramatically raise taxes on the US middle class (which pays very little in taxes vs most developed nations) to match up with what countries with single payer systems do; and explain to the middle class that they're going to be better off with socialized healthcare, and that the increased taxes will be off-set by the government healthcare vs the old private insurance approach. Then you also have to significantly raise taxes on the top 25%, which pay most of the taxes in the US.

No problem eh.

I'd suggest not to use the model of centralistic and rather socialistic nations like France as a model for the US. Not that I don't like that model, I just don't think it's a good fit. Instead look at Switzerland for example. Leaving foreign politics away it almost seems like a shrunken down version of the US, both politically and economically, with just a few major differences:

* even more locally organised. County sized administrations have about the same independence as US states.

* instead of spending our (similar) tax rates on the military, it is spent on superb health care (imagine a souped up version of Obamacare with regulated prices), schools and a social net. Look at the numbers though - I think it works, that is, innovation and the economy in general are strong thanks to a more stable middle class (that doesn't experience negative social mobility due to health care problems and overpaid schools plus gets an influx from people at the poor end that make it by means of a helping hand at child age).

* and no, I would argue Switzerland is not significantly less diverse with about 30% immigrant population. We have about the same proportion of backwards rightwing pseudo conservatives as a counterreaction, but they are bound to a political system that makes getting absolute majorities in the parliament near impossible (and also relatively useless alone thanks to referendums that serve as a moderation tool). See also again the difference in how middle class is kept going, which makes a Populist power grab much less likely.

We could redirect 50% of our military spending to single payer and it would not even remotely fix our problems. That amount of money would make single payer work in just California (ie 10% of the nation). We probably need to be spending $200+ billion more just on our existing medicare + medicaid + VA health systems as it is. People that keep saying things like that about military spending, don't seem to understand that the biggest problem the US has, is for single payer to work millions of Americans are going to have to lose big time, to the tune of a trillion dollar cut affecting millions of incomes & jobs that feed off the system bloat. You either need to come up with trillions of dollars in new funding to do single payer, or you need to tell millions of Americans they're going to be fired and or take big pay cuts (plausibly both).

I agree, there are better systems than France. My only reference to France, is about competitive salaries in the healthcare industry. Wages in that industry have to come down by a lot to match comparables in eg France, Germany, UK.

When people talk about single payer re the US, they focus on drug prices and insurance industry costs. They ignore that essentially every cost in the US system is inflated, including routine labor and dozens of side connected feeder industries (everything from saline supply to the cost of hospital beds to labor costs in elderly care). Most of the cost bloat in the system is made up of salaries for workers such as nurses, doctors, hospital workers, admin and health insurance employees. You could slash pharma costs nearly in half in the US and only save ~$150 billion of the $1 trillion we have to cut out of our costs to get cost competitive again. Every one of these cuts will have substantial economic consequences; cut pharma in half, lose a million high paying jobs directly & indirectly that support the tax base that pays for the single payer system (ie you have to figure out how to replace that; which would occur, but it'd take lots of time).

That said, the way the US is actually going to go, is we're going to do a slow mediocre drift into single payer, through gradual expansion as the existing convoluted system fails one tier after another (essentially failing up the economic chain; the middle class will gradually all be pulled into government healthcare by necessity as the system collapses). Maybe out of desperation they'll use medicare as the platform, since the politicians in Washington DC can never agree on anything it's most likely our result will be to use something that already exists and just enlarge it.

Again, broaden your view a bit. Switzerland has a very similar health care system with a similar cost structure and a similarly strong pharmaceutical lobby - just vastly better outcomes.

US government spends more per person on heathcare than Canada. So, we could use their system for essentially zero extra cost per year post transition. The difference is US heathcare makes people rich, where US social security for example does not. This waste does not translate to better care just vastly more waste.

The VA hospital system is a US example demonstrating vastly lower costs with similar outcomes. Scale that to say all of Medicare + all government workers and costs drop enough to cover vastly more people. Now add in other programs like the Ryan White AIDS program which covers ~300,000 people with very high cost care and the supliments to Rural heathcare systems etc and heathcare would look very different and cheaper.

> US government spends more per person on heathcare than Canada. So, we could use their system for essentially zero extra cost per year post transition.

I've made that point numerous times in this thread. I think you're missing my point: the US has to slash a trillion dollars in expenses out of its system. That trillion dollars consists of jobs & people's income & tax base loss. It is not a zero cost transition, it's a massive cost transition. You're talking about it as though it would occur in a vacuum, it would not.

The VA system is not an example of lower costs. You're wrong, it's more expensive than both the private sector and medicare:

http://dailycaller.com/2014/06/02/report-va-health-care-has-...

Your comparing heathcare spending while ignoring age differences making that analysis meaningless. 4 to 40 year olds don't spend much on healthcare. Veterans are by definition old.

Further the UA is often covering the most expensive care such as hip replacements, the fact that it's a lower percentage of costs is a result of efficiency of the VA and waste in the rest of the system.

As to lowering costs, economically spending money on heathcare billing vs Rail is only different because Rail provides long term value. As long as total spending is unchanged there is no reason to suspect economic harm.

The VA system is only representing 1/3 of actual healthcare costs that vets are actually costing. That figure is then intentionally abused to represent that the VA system is less expensive. It's propaganda, nothing more.

> As long as total spending is unchanged there is no reason to suspect economic harm.

You mean other than the vast dislocation that health industry labor - and two dozen other industries reliant on that spending - would suffer? People taking pay cuts in healthcare, workers losing jobs in pharma & health insurance by the hundreds of thousands (high paying jobs at that). Your premise would only actually work that way in a simulation (and it'd be a really bad simulation, not accounting for anything in the real world), not in reality. In reality, there is dramatic economic friction that occurs when you fire someone and they have to retrain / find a new job, or when you cut their pay to bring costs in line. There are immense short-term and long-term costs to that upheaval, in reality. Such costs include: unemployment costs, job training, long-term unemployment costs, welfare benefit costs, tax base loss until jobs & incomes are recovered. The US economy is growing very slow, where's the evidence it can absorb such losses and then create a million new high paying jobs (simultaneously while automation is about to bear down on just about every category of employment)?

Your falling hard for the broken window fallacy. Transition need not be over a weekend, and the net gains from increased efficiency more than cover transition costs over time.

If the VA spent 1/2 as much money and covered 1/6 of the costs while provoviding the same benefit that would be a good thing. This analysis ignores survives provided because the only way to make them look bad is to pretend spending more money is somehow a good thing.

The way that the US is spending money (e.g. building a 1.5tn fighter jet that can hardly fight and a 35bn aircraft carrier that can't launch) I would actually start getting worried about adversaries with just a tenth of the US budget.

To put it differently, if the Swiss, population 8M, can figure out how to transport 1.8x the amount of rail passengers compared to the entire US (no, not by capita, in absolute numbers [1]), it could also happen that a smaller budget military outmaneuvers US army, navy and marines. That being said, conventional armies made for symmetric warfare seem just about as useless now as at the height of the cold war. But not even the security of the nuclear arsenal seems a high priority in US politics today.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_rail_us...

Your arguments rest on irrational statements.

The US isn't spending $1.5 trillion on the F35. First, the costs will be spread over decades; second, the US will never order even half the planes in question; it never does when it comes to large systems orders. In 10-15 years they'll be slashing the buying down toward zero as with the F22 (as the military chomps at the bit to move on to new programs), the F35 program will cost half as much as claimed presently, as most of the cost projections are based on maintenance costs over 30 years for thousands of planes that will never be purchased (we're going to buy thousands of F35s over decades? yeah right).

That aircraft carrier will launch. Every country that has ever built one has had significant problems doing so, the US has a long successful history of building & deploying aircraft carriers, the latest one will be no different regardless of temporary problems.

You aren't reading favourably. It could well be that the whole stealth superiority fighter concept is outdated due to new cheap sensor technology (and its use in AA defense systems) and the whole concept of carrier groups could soon be outdated due to something new, like undetectable diesel/electric submarine drones that cost a 3 orders of magnitude less, thus could be built as swarms that become impossible to deal with. My main point is, don't just look at the spending. And (I think your comment is symptomatic), don't forget the damn nukes, those things should be the biggest worry of all.

Well I do think the F35 and carrier approach is very soon to be outdated. Which is also why there's zero chance we're going to order thousands of F35s; 10 years out, they'll already be wanting to kill that program to replace it with something else as the obvious inbound threats to traditional fighters (various cheap autonomous tech) become more blatant. That of course won't stop them from spending as you know.

The carriers are not hard to sink; they never really have been for a major opponent. China and Russia have been able to sink them for a long time. They're not for fighting adversaries that can sink them. They're force projection, intimidation, and for fighting countries that aren't Russia or China. Carriers will be useful in their present role for a few decades to come yet (their current role is not for potentially fighting Russia or China; anyone that thinks that is seriously confused). Military tier nations in the capability realm of Iran, might pose a real threat to carriers in 15-20 years. The trick with US carriers, is that anyone (again, not named Russia or China) that actually sinks one has a full scale war with the US on their hands. In that sense, carriers are a taunting device: you can try to sink one, but if you succeed, your country is going to be massively attacked (you're going to trade sinking a carrier for losing all your airports, your power grid is going to be taken down, your airforce is going to be neutralized, your economy is going to grind to a halt, etc).

Any country that will dear to sink an US aircraft carrier will either have the means to wipe out most of US population too (Russia, China) or just won't care about the consequences (North Korea / Iran, if they think US is about to attack them). In neither case is taunting particularly efficient.

Switzerland: 15,940 mi²

Texas: 268,597 mi²

U.S.: 3,797,000 mi²

US has about the same population density as Switzerland in multiple areas that are at least as large: LA, Bay area and especially Philadelphia-DC-NYC-Boston.

So.. how does size exactly stop the US from having the to-date most efficient mass transport? I'm not talking LA-NYC, noone is gonna do that until someone builds vacuum tubes. First you need good local and regional travel.

Switzerland also has to build tunnels, because of the Alps. I am not an expert on US geography, but there seem to be places with many people and much easier terrain to build rails on.

How many trips cross Texas or the US? How many trips happen within a couple hundred miles of major urban centers?

As an example of how low it is, Russia's GDP is barely more than Australia's and is below Canada's. How the mighty have fallen.

It was never large to begin with. USSR thought that Russians don't need money and then Putin thinks exactly the same.

> Further, the $165 billion wouldn't accomplish anything in terms of infrastructure, or healthcare, or anything else.

That's an absurd statement to make. Total spending on highway and street construction in the US is around $90 billion annually: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/TLHWYCONS . You are honestly arguing that adding an additional ~185% of what we spend on roads today wouldn't accomplish anything?

It's not absurd at all, your premise is wrong. US infrastructure problems are not isolated to present annual highway & street construction outlays.

We have immense problems everywhere from dams to grid to schools to bridges to healthcare (we could use to spend tens of billions in additional money just on the VA healthcare system), that are not present in that $90 billion and would not be dented by $165 billion per year.

We spent hundreds of billions on the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and it barely made any difference.

The cost to redo a bridge in the US and then properly maintain it, is far beyond the cost to presently barely maintain it properly as we're doing.

That $90 billion you're quoting, is a vast under-outlay versus what we should be spending. Which is another way of saying, we need to be spending dramatically more just to break even on our current maintenance requirements. The US is facing trillions in spending just to replace our failing/failed infrastructure, and then all that newly replaced infrastructure needs to be maintained properly - so take that $90 billion and increase it upwards of 3x; 2x is what we should be spending now and are not; 3x is what we'll need to spend after we spend trillions on replacement to maintain the new infrastructure properly. That's just for our existing roads / highway infrastructure (which is merely one subset of our infrastructure spending needs).

When you're talking about something like fixing infrastructure the amounts are in the trillions of dollars but there is a realization that you are not going to come up with all the money in a single year. Coincidentally $165 billion a year would have more then made up for the infrastructure funding gap of $1.44 trillion over the next 9 years:

https://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/wp-content/uploads/...

Even not looking at those numbers saying that amount 'wouldn't accomplish anything' is ridiculous. Hundreds of billions of dollars a year is a huge amount in any sector of the economy, even for the US. You can try and defend it as much as you want but that is a hyperbolic statement completely disconnected from reality.

Expenditures are a terrible way to measure military strength. The US military can't pay Chinese wages.

ok, so how about the number of bases in other counties and the current number of military operations.

Are we going to use the list going around which assumes a group of five guys is a military base? If so, there are a lot of other countries with military bases in the US.

exactly how much is wages of the total spend?

I would think nearly everything, either uniform military or contractor employee. What else is there?

$139B out of $583B is salaries

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_...

But that's sort of irrelevant, isn't it? When the USAF buys an F-35, the cost of the F-35 is almost entirely domestic US labor, even though on the military budget it counts as equipment.

labor is a small component through and through. Most of the money goes to paying off capital. You can dd up all the salaries all the way through and they won't amount to more than 25% of the total.

What do you mean, "paying off capital"? There's no way salaries amount to less than about 90% of the total.

have you ever thought where return on investment/capital comes from?

You can hire 100 people to make 100,000 needles a day by hand tools or instead build a $200,000 plant that make 10 million needles a day with three guys operating the machines. In both cases the profit goes to the plant owner, while in the second the cost of labor will be less than 3% of the receipts.

3%? No. That's not even close. And you're leaving out indirect labor - people got paid to build everything you buy.

how much labor does capital need to produce returns?

the wages in economy are well documented. as well as returns on capital. Actual data matters. Don't take my word for it. read up an actual economist.

http://voxeu.org/article/reducing-inequality-deconcentrating...

The rich aren't rich because they put in more labor and got more salaries.

This doesn't support your point at all. It's only tangentially related.

It'd be more accurate to leave off the "we" that you insist on using to artificially bolster your premise.

George W. Bush was elected on a platform of no more nation building (and secured his second term in an atmosphere of fear and war), as was Donald Trump. It's very clear that the majority of Americans do not want more war & nation building (the only ones that do, are a contingent of conservatives like McCain and even fewer similar hawks on the other side).

The globalists + military industrial complex go ahead and do what they want anyway, against the wishes of the American public. They've been doing so for a long, long time now. Vietnam was not a very popular war, they did it anyway. The notion of no longer blowing up the Middle East and treating Russia as a villain, was impossible for them to stomach re Trump, so the CIA & fellow globalists (aka the deep state, media, etc) immediately went on hyper attack (oh the consequences of going against the machine).

Yeah they lied to go to war in Vietnam just like they lied to go to war in Iraq just like they lied to go to war in Libya just like they're lying now because they're so eager to go to war in Syria. Fortunately for the MIC we Americans are really stupid and easily distracted by shiny media bullshit.

> Vietnam was not a very popular war, they did it anyway.

It was extremely popular when LBJ started the war. Less than 25% of the public thought sending troops to Vietnam was a mistake. Similarly, only 23% of Americans thought sending troops to Iraq was a mistake at the outset of that war. Popular opinion overwhelmingly supported both of those wars. The notion that "it's very clear that the majority of Americans do not want more war & nation building" and "the globalists + military industrial complex go ahead and do what they want anyway" isn't just misleading, it's false -- if not an outright lie.

> as was Donald Trump

>The notion of no longer blowing up the Middle East and treating Russia as a villain, was impossible for them to stomach re Trump,

Ah, yes, which is why he's threatening North Korea, attacking airfields in Syria, selling weapons to Saudi Arabia (which is currently in a war with Yemen), bombing in Afghanistan, in his own words giving the military "total authorization", authorized a raid in Yemen, and the list goes on.

You were _sold_ no more nation building, by a man who has interests in having his fingers everywhere in the globe. That you bought it hook, line and sinker is yet another problem.

In the same way, the Vietnam war was reasonably popular at first. It was barely around 67 and after countless deaths that the opinion was overwhelmingly negative, forcing the US to go back tail between its legs.

Maybe Americans no longer want war. Every single leader they are electing certainly doesn't share that opinion though. So, either they actually quite enjoy playing world police, or they're quite frankly so manipulable it becomes scary. But go on ahead and blame "the globalists" and "the deep state" (which, intended or not, is very much an InfoWars term, not exactly a reputable source), I am certain that'll do a lot of good.

So, either they actually quite enjoy playing world police, or they're quite frankly so manipulable it becomes scary.

‘Both’ is also an option.

Russia is a villain. Putin and his regime is a threat to world peace. The last thing we want is meek and complacent America that lets Putin wreak his havoc unchecked.

> developing economies are going wireless/fiber and skipping the "legacy" generation, the US should be doing the same with MagLev/hyperloop

Opponents of HSL will not only rally against it, but also kill it by promoting a more expensive solution via another channel. The US isn't going to cut military spending so it can build hyperloop instead of HSL.

The dilemma is no different from "should I buy Product X now, or wait a year for version 2 of Product X", only on a national scale. Needless to say, if you play to this psychology successfully, you can delay a project indefinitely.

The point is, HSR is a 2600k and maglev is a 4790k.

Both are old vs the shiny 7700k maglev, but if you're gonna buy the 2600k just doesn't make sense.

"high speed rail" is an oxymoron. There are no high speed rail transport methods. 200MPH is not high-speed.

"200MPH is not high-speed."

Says who?

Originally anything over 125mph was "high-speed rail" simply because it required new engineering techniques to be developed (existing trains and tracks were physically not engineered to withstand those speeds). As the engineering was developed further, 125mph became old news and the 'typical' definition became more like 160mph [1].

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail

If you compare to highway travel, even 100mph would be "high speed" because people aren't going to drive 100mph on the Interstate. If you compare to airplanes, nothing is high speed, not even maglev. No one is planning to build maglev with a cruising speed of 550mph.

Another important point is that high speed rail is still rail, whereas maglev requires a custom alignment. This could be important or it might not matter at all, depending on where you're building -- e.g. France's system relies heavily on the TGVs being able to use existing conventional tracks (to reach the centre of Paris, and to branch out into smaller cities that don't merit constructing a dedicated line), Japan's doesn't (because the conventional railways in Japan are narrow-gauge).

Likewise, California HSR plans to share most of the peninsula rail corridor with Caltrain. Theoretically it's a win-win (HSR doesn't have to tear a completely new alignment through a heavily-built-up area, Caltrain gets financial support for upgrading its corridor) -- you couldn't do that with a maglev. In practice, the project is not well-coordinated, but see what I said above about Brezhnevian stagnation.

All that said, a train that can travel on both maglev and conventional track would actually be an interesting next step for high speed rail. It doesn't seem impossible.

>the US should be doing the same with MagLev/hyperloop

In what way is hyperloop better than high-speed rail? I've never seen any credible study or report that argues it. Hyperloop also has massive unsolved (and potentially unsolvable) technical issues - like building a vacuum chamber of unprecedented size.

Agreed.

The Swiss did study something similar (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swissmetro) but their proposal looks a lot more expensive and is entirely in-tunnel.

Even Italy and Spain have trains faster than 200mph.. Hyperloop has a much smaller capacity compared to them, so I can't see how it can be an improvement.

> Installing "high speed" rail that's less than 200mph in the US today is like installing 6MB copper DSL and calling it a win

When the alternative is nothing, as is the case in 99% of the US today, I'd still call that a win.

I'd personally be completely overjoyed if the US "only" got 200mph train lines between all major cities.

The trick is, train isn't cheaper that planes. Ecologically, the French TGV isn't considered better than planes in terms of glasshouse gases (i.e. the ecological approach says a km travelled is bad, whether by flight or by train). Moneywise, it mostly depends on how you expropriate land owners. Europe is really good at citing the "public good" or "strategic interest of the nation" to reclaim private land, and I'm saying that because I've seen that the indemnification is way below the market value of the fields. Whereas in US, litigation is costly and land owners can be very powerful, making the costs soar for train infrastructure.

I'd like to see a study thay analyses whether tge whole train-in-Europe vs airports-in-USA might even be explained by this sole ability of US landowners to defend themselves.

However, remains one question: If Europeans can travel by train without being searched, isn't the USA violating the freedom of movement by using planes instead of trains, then imposing the TSA and other no-fly-list laws?

I'm not sure I understand how you're managing to dismiss geography here. Can you explain why you think it doesn't matter? The biggest cities in the US are, with the exception of the Eastern Seaboard where we already have usable rail and California where they're building it now, simply very far apart.

Even with the best available rail technology, trips between them would take over 12 hours by rail.

vancouver seattle portland sacramento sf fresno la san diego is a perfectly workable corridor. at 200mph SF to LA would be a 2 hour ride, perfectly competitive with air if done right.

Airplanes work now and are paid for by their passengers. High speed trains would take immense investments and would have to be subsidized till the end of time. They'd only be competitive in travel times for under 200 mile trips, and that only because we don't impose the same security requirements on trains as planes, which is ludicrous given the have the exact same risks. After the first terrorist takes out a high speed train and kills hundreds of passengers and possibly hundreds of others (depending upon where the 200 MPH 500 Ton train tumbles through) there will be TSA security lines on train travel to match plane travel.

Lastly it's far easier to scale up with planes. You can't add more trains to one high speed track if another train is already on it heading towards you at high speed.

I don't know where you get that >200mi is infeasible.

shanghai - beijing HST is 819 miles/5 hours @ 220 mph with stops and carries 130 million a year and is insensitive to weather unlike planes.

its not easier to scale up planes. Have you tried building a new 777 capable airport in SF or LA lately?

Have you tried building a new rail line? Hint: adding a runway to an existing airport or building an entirely new airport, is simple, cheap and easy by comparison.

BOS has been trying complete a new runway for 40 years. No dice. you can see the half completed runway at 42.365685N, -70.998083W

https://www.google.com/maps/dir/42.3649312,-70.997063/North+...

and this couldn't be done even though no houses need to go. in comparison the big dig tunnels under downtown boston were constructed just fine (slow and over budget but done)

Inside the cities rail use existing Rights of Way or build tunnels. Much easier to build a tunnel under a city than demolish 10 sq mi of cbd.

Not really true, pretty much every intra-regional trip would be well served by high speed rail. Seattle-Portland, Charlotte-Atlanta, Minneapolis-Chicago, etc.

All of these trips are currently frequently taken by car because flying is a nuisance and takes a lot longer than just the flight duration itself.

See downthread about Minneapolis-Chicago, which I do not think makes much sense:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14679127

I don't dispute that there are pockets of the US that would be well-served by rail. Maybe SEA-PDX is one of them! Note, though, that neither Seattle nor Portland are in the top 10 economically most important US cities.

I'm not anti-train. I love HSR. I wish we had more of it. But I think there's a solid reason that we don't.

"See downthread about Minneapolis-Chicago, which I do not think makes much sense"

MPLS-Chicago has never really resonated with me, but there are some straight north south lines that I think make a lot of sense ...

Duluth-MPLS-DesMoines-KCMO would make a lot of sense.

Cheyenne-FortCollins-Denver-ColoSprings-Pueblo ... that would make a lot of sense.

I don't know how much more useful or attractive train travel gets between Portland and Seattle just by making the train faster. The train in place already loses to air travel most of the time because it's not cheaper enough to justify it.

Any conversations of car-vs-train have to account for the linear scaling cost compared to loading up 4+ people and/or a bunch of stuff in a car.

> Even with the best available rail technology, trips between them would take over 12 hours by rail.

New York-San Francisco (for example) in 12 hours by train could be great: leave at 7pm, eat dinner, get a full night's sleep, wake up the next morning and you're there.

The night on the train shouldn't cost more than an extra night in a hotel room would've cost, and you've gone city center to city center and avoided the nightmare of air travel.

Sign me up.

NYC to SFO in 12 hours would be amazing. What train technology gets you that?

It's ~ 350km/h, can be done with TGV-like speeds.

That's a max speed, not an average.

And again, for this fantastical train, we're earning the privilege of doing in 12 hours what a plane will do in 6.

Does that six hours include travel to the airport, check-in, security clearance, boarding, deplaning, baggage collection, and travel from the destination airport back into the city?

If you factor in all this extra stuff, it looks more like 9-10 hours.

You have most of that with a train too, other than the security clearance (for now). But assuming high-speed train travel became something more than the sideshow operation that is Amtrak today, security screening of passengers would very likely be implemented.

No you don't. As someone who lives in a country with functioning high speed rail and who uses it regularly, let me tell you how it works here:

You go to the train station, which is in the city centre. You use a subway, tram or bicycle to get there. You walk in, go to your platform and enter the train. You place your luggage in the luggage rack and take your seat. When the train arrives at your destination or interchange point, you grab your stuff and leave. Sometime in between, staff will walk the train and check your ticket.

No long transit to/from the station. No check-in, no security screening, no baggage drop-off/pickup. It's a train, not rocket science.

It's called an airplane and it gets you there in six.

If you take into account ticketing and check in and security and boarding, the actual number is more like 9 or 10 hours.

Add to this the commute to and from the airports and you are looking at 12 hours.

But then you have to get on an airplane and all the horror that brings with it.

doing some napkin math (and assuming you can lay track with a run length about equal to doing this by car) you'd need a train averaging 250mph. Current top average speeds for wheeled trains (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TGV) are in the 170mph range.

NYC to SFO in 12 hours is an average speed of 215mph, assuming the most direct route possible.

Practically you would require a top speed of ~250mph, and current current generation of conventional rail trains max out at about 190-210mph. But they could easily do NYC to SFO in 13-14 hours.

The Shanghai Maglev Train reaches a top speed of 268mph (during it's short 7min trip to the airport), so it could do the trip in less than 12 hours. But I'm not sure it's theoretically practical over distances that long.

That's a hell of a lot of infrastructure just to link two end-points at opposite ends of the continent. Any train going that route is not going to be an express, and more stops significantly affect average speed.

Getting downvoted for bringing up completely reasonable points?

And who is gonna pay for this magical high speed railroad that never breaks down and is never delayed?

High speed rail in California is costing around $90 million per mile. A perfectly straight line from NYC-SF is 2,572 miles. That's nearly a quarter of a trillion dollars. All to allow costal elites to increase their travel time? Sure.

  NYC to SFO in 12 hours is an average speed of 215mph

With zero stops and no delays.

It doesn't exist now. That doesn't mean it couldn't be built; the article was lamenting America's loss of vision and technological leadership, and I was replying to your comment that implied that 12 hours between major cities would be too slow, which in the case of coast-to-coast I disagree with.

So you're spending a bunch of money to build a route - and how many stops do you have in between dragging down that average speed? - that does half of what you can do in air, at probably not a ton more comfort level at twice+ the length (I've not seen a lot of inexpensive long train trips in the US or Asia that beat domestic coach (let alone domestic first) by enough for me to want to put up with it for two or more times the amount of time), and at the end of the day you haven't solved SEA-NYC, LAX-NYC, etc, which are all already served in the status quo.

As a historical timing thing, most of the US leapfrogged the need for urban density and big train networks with air travel and automobiles, and neither of them are expensive enough relative to national wealth now to make it easy to justify investing more in alternatives currently. Especially with self-driving electric cars and alternative energy sources potentially around the corner to plow through the biggest pain points we've encountered around our car-centric urban design so far.

"how many stops do you have in between dragging down that average speed?"

It's amazing that other countries haven't solved this problem by inventing things like express trains.

Oh wait, they have. It's the literally same technology as a skip list.

"that does half of what you can do in air, at probably not a ton more comfort level at twice+ the length (I've not seen a lot of inexpensive long train trips in the US or Asia that beat domestic coach (let alone domestic first) by enough for me to want to put up with it for two or more times the amount of time), and at the end of the day you haven't solved SEA-NYC, LAX-NYC, etc, which are all already served in the status quo."

And yet, most people aren't traveling cost-to-coast. We don't need to solve SEA-NYC with trains. Solving SEA-LAX or NYC-ATL would be more than good enough.

Otherwise, your comment is completely counterfactual. I just spent a year in Japan. Trains there are cost-competitive with air travel, far better in terms of time and convenience, and vastly more comfortable. The only train segments that are "twice the length" of driving or flying are the segments that don't exist (i.e. you have to take a circuitous route, because the direct line isn't there). No rational person in Japan prefers to fly or drive if they can take a train. Even the local lines are preferable for trips under 4-5 hours.

And Japan is the size of the US west coast, with similar population distribution (a few big cities, with lots of smaller, rural towns between). There's no reason we can't have the same systems in America. We just don't, because we don't invest, and Americans insist on arguing about things they don't understand, based on little more than opinion and ideology.

Osaka is just 300 miles from Tokyo. You can't even get from SFO to Los Angeles in 300 miles. Of course trains work in Japan.

"Osaka is just 300 miles from Tokyo. You can't even get from SFO to Los Angeles in 300 miles. Of course trains work in Japan."

Come on. You're a smart person. You can do better math than this.

San Francisco to LA: 383 miles. Seattle to Portland: 200 miles. Portland to San Francisco: 636 miles.

That extra 80 miles means it'll clearly never work, I guess. Because obviously, Japanese people would never ride the most heavily used shinkansen line in Japan if it took thirty minutes longer.

(Not incidentally: Tokyo to Kagoshima - 900 miles. Takes 7 hours by train. Costs less than $280. I've done it. Entirely pleasant, and time competitive with airlines, if you include the time you spend waiting, going through security, and so on. Which you must.)

Most of the largest cities in Japan are within ~340 miles of Tokyo. Neither Seattle nor Portland are in our top 10. The point I am making here is pretty clear. HSR makes sense as a national investment for Japan. The people of Houston, Atlanta, Miami, and Phoenix hardly benefit at all from coastal HSR --- which is already happening anyways.

I'm not arguing against west coastal HSR. PDX-SEA makes a lot of sense, if you can get Oregon and Washington to agree on how to fund it, as does SFO-LAX. But find the nearest city to SFO not directly on the west coast that's in the top 10 by population, and see whether HSR makes sense compared to commercial air. Chances are: no.

"Most of the largest cities in Japan are within ~340 miles of Tokyo. Neither Seattle nor Portland are in our top 10. The point I am making here is pretty clear. HSR makes sense as a national investment for Japan."

You keep repeating this "top ten cities" thing, as if it's important. But the only question that matters is: do enough people/things travel between X and Y to justify investment in a rail system at cost $Z? That's an actual debate we can have. Moreover, regardless of what you think of Seattle and Portland, if you don't count SF and Los Angeles (again, 380 miles) as important American cities, I don't know what to say to you.

"The people of Houston, Atlanta, Miami, and Phoenix hardly benefit at all from coastal HSR --- which is already happening anyways."

Atlanta to Miami: 662 miles. Houston to Dallas: 239 miles. Dallas to Denver: 800 miles. There are many, many regional connections in the US that make economic sense for HSR. Not just coastal lines.

But no, it's not already happening. We have a few projects that look increasingly likely to die. Because literally every time the subject comes up, naysayers are there to argue that the USA is just fundamentally exceptional to every similar place where HSR is working well.

They say that because it is. Our geography is different, and our transportation market evolved around that geography. In the US, people fly Southwest instead of buying Eurail passes.

This comment explains it pretty well:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14681704

"They say that because it is. Our geography is different"

Well, as long as you're being specific...

That comment says nothing new. It repeats the same stuff you've already said across this thread, and provides no evidence to back up the assertions. It does get the basic facts wrong, though: the vast majority of traffic on the "Tokyo to Kyoto" line goes between Tokyo and Osaka. Those cities are big (~9 million people each; Nagoya and Kyoto are comparatively small at ~2 million people each), but they're still only ~14% of Japan's population (17% if you include Kyoto and Nagoya).

Again: the only thing that matters is the number of people traveling between the points on the line. We know these things, and it's clear where high-speed rail would work. We don't need to have nebulous debates about "economic value". And arguing that "people don't buy Eurail passes" is absurd on its face. They certainly would, if Eurail actually existed.

> if you can get Oregon and Washington to agree on how to fund it

Good luck.

We (WA) just had our 3rd special session and although we finally passed our $43bn state budget, our (admittedly smaller) capital budget is still up in the air because of water rights issues.

OR doesn't look much better right now—it's 8 days until sine die and it appears there's a chance they'll run into special sessions, too.

WA just pumped a massive amount of money ($8bn) into K-12 education because of the McCleary decision, and there's not much other money to go around. The Dems are wary about pitching an actual state income tax (this year they tried pitching a cap gains tax as an "excise tax" :-) because it's constantly been rejected by both the voters and state supreme court. The GOP just had to push a state-wide property tax and had to agree to a paid family leave act as part of budget negotiations, so I doubt they'll be down for any new taxes. Plus, ST3 was recently approved which jacks up taxes in the RTA zone, which includes big city centers like Seattle and Tacoma.

Long story short, I really, really doubt there will be any big infrastructure pushes in the near future. There's just not much money and outside of Seattle property it's not politically viable to run on "more taxes!" especially when the east side of the state will go berserk if they're forced to pay for more west side infrastructure.

I've seen flights from NY->SFO for less than the cost of a night in a Silicon Valley hotel. I don't think it's optimal though.

Sleeper trains are still a big thing in Europe. They're tantamount to teleportation - you get on board, have a meal, go to bed and wake up just in time to shower, eat breakfast and arrive at your destination. An eleven hour journey might only cost you ninety minutes of useful time.

https://www.eurail.com/en/europe-by-train/night-trains

For America, the overwhelming shortcoming is ordinary commuter rail networks. Park-and-ride is a well-proven concept that can massively reduce traffic and local air pollution, while still serving very large areas of suburban sprawl. Many American cities could be completely transformed with a handful of well-planned commuter rail routes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Park_and_ride

>An eleven hour journey might only cost you ninety minutes of useful time.

And a good nights rest, trying to sleep on those things is almost impossible for me and I have no sleep problems normally.

Everybody have their thing. Some people loathe to fly. Other can't sleep in overnight trains. Me, I sleep like a baby.

Some friends of mine who won the Design and Propulsion prizes at the Hyperloop competition ( http://hyperloopupv.com/ ) from Spain are talking with some mid-eastern countries to make it a reality. European engineers building the Hyperloop in Asia. It might not be so far fetched as it seems.

Hyperloop is a joke. Japan's maglev is a reality. Japan is building a maglev line from Tokyo to Nagoya. The first 42km section is running right now. 500km/hour. 600km/hour in tests. Train sets have been delivered. Stations are under construction. Tunnels are being bored. Opening 2027.

Isn't it, like, super expensive though?

Also as an aside. Japan is this weird example of a country with a good education system, hard workers, excellent infrastructure, and yet a totally stagnant economy. I mean I understand a lot of the reasons, but it's still weird.

That's the thing buses and trains are more expensive than driving because of sunk costs of owning a car and at the same time they are not usually as efficient to use, i.e. add another 1/2 to your trip time. Time is something in very short supply. So you can build all the bus routes and trains you want, that does not mean anyone actually wants to use them. Then there is whole boredom of riding transportation rather than actually driving. All these people harp about public transportation, etc, but really given the choice does anyone actually prefer public transportation over cars if the roads can accommodate them. I don't think so.

Yes? I’d absolutely rather spend time on a train than a car. It’s faster, takes me right into the centre of the town I’m going to, I don’t have to worry about finding a parking space and I can get some work done on the way (or just read a book). Why would you want to drive?

What? Trains are worse than buses, in that they taken you further from where you want to go in a slower manner that you still have to uber to your actual destination from.

Where do you live where trains are slower than buses?

To a certain extent you’re right in that it’s all just a question of where you live. But for me recently all the trains I have been taking are in Japan or UK, and if I need to get to somewhere that’s more than a short walk from the central train station there’s been a light rail or underground system for me to transfer onto.

Only the nation's capital - good 'ol Washington, D.C. Metro area where busses on 66 regularly pass the metro on dedicated rail including on 128 where the new 'silver line' was recently completed and extensions ongoing

Not to mention that bus fares in the area, in most situations, are cheaper than the metro for same distance covered

A typical third rail metro moves at around 25-30mph if you factor in station stops. Top speed varies, e.g. for Washington Metro the cars can accelerate up to 75mph but could plausibly be much slower depending on the track characteristics, how well sections of it are maintained, and how well the trains are scheduled. Hence it's unsurprising that Metro trains will get passed on a freeway unless there's a traffic jam.

Where Metro wins is on capacity. When the trains are full, one track of Metro carries an amount of people that would fill up 10 lanes of freeway. Of course, one major problem is that building mass transit is sold to the public as a way to 'reduce congestion' i.e. "other people will ride the subway so that my freeway will be clear". Due to induced demand from other people shifting their travel to the highway, this is not really truthful advertising.

It's more accurate to say that the mass transit provides an alternative for people who are fed up with traffic jams and want a more predictable way of getting downtown. Buses fail to provide that alternative, because unless the transit agency manages to get a dedicated bus lane along the whole route (it's probably not), they are going to be stuck in the same traffic that an ordinary car is stuck in.

The metro might occasionally get passed by buses for brief stretches, but it's definitely faster overall. I have tried several methods of commuting and metro is easily the fastest, even though I have a reverse commute which makes other methods faster than they would be in the direction that most people are going.

Go travel round Europe for a month using nothing but public transport and come tell us the same thing. That's basically the entire point of the article, the trains in the US absolutely suck compared to any other developed country. Most are quicker than driving and do take you into the hear of the city, I can travel from London city centre to Manchester city centre (163 miles as the crow flies) in 90 mins, if I drove it'd take 3-4 hours traffic depending. A good rail network makes your arguments invalid I'm afraid.

Edit: For a more US kind of distance look at London to Paris, 2h15m (883 miles as the crow flies) from city centre to city centre.

London to Paris is more like 215 miles.

Your numbers are way off. Fastest Manchester-London train is 2h (the 0700 Manchester stoping 0707 Stockport and 0900 Euston). I don't think there's one quite that fast on the way back. It's about 180 miles. London is a late city but I wouldn't call Euston "the centre", it's not even in the congestion charge zone. Plan on a good 30 minutes to get to your destination in London and 15 in Manchester.

Paris is not 800 miles, or even 800km.

You're right that a car is unlikely to be the better choice for Manchester-london when ignoring costs (£124 each way on the quiet trains)

Here in Japan trains have been an integral part of the transportation system for so long that a lot of the destinations you want have been built up around the train stations. The train companies make a significant portion of their income from real estate (malls) built in or around train stations since there's so much foot traffic.

For those of us that have to deal with urban centres, a car is often extremely inconvenient. Add a half hour to your trip time just to park it. You have to go back and get it when it's time to leave instead of just hopping on the nearest train station, etc. That and cost of ownership. I'd rather spend the couple of bucks/quid/x00jpy to have someone take care of that for me and get off when I need to. Plus I'm less bored on the train because I can engage my mind with reading/work/games instead of yelling at all the drivers that are clearly not as good as me.

Cars are better than trains if you assume you're just sitting there on the train doing nothing. But I can be working on personal projects, browsing, etc on a train. The only thing I can do while driving is listen to music.

Yes, people absolutely prefer public transportation to cars with accommodating roads.

Have you been to Japan?

Time spent on public transport is useful, particularly time spent on trains. You've got wifi, a table and a power socket, so you can get real work done. You can have a proper meal and a glass of wine, you can watch a movie, read a book or have a nap. Most buses in my country now have wifi and power sockets.

A lot of rail commuters find that their commute is an unusually productive time. You've got all the resources you need to work but relatively few distractions, especially in the quiet carriage. It's a little slice of time that's entirely your own. It's like working in a cafe, except you're travelling at 125mph.

Here in the UK, the railways are too successful for their own good - passenger volume has doubled in 20 years, so the infrastructure is creaking under the sheer weight of passengers. We're building a new cross-country high-speed route, two major commuter routes across London, upgrading vast swathes of the network and it's still not nearly enough to keep up with demand.

Most commuters are not on 125mph lines.

I used to commute Brighton to London, the trains are nice and I could get a seat. However anyone getting on at any intermediate stations usually had to stand.

We definitely need more high speed lines to free up space on the other lines.

> All these people harp about public transportation, etc, but really given the choice does anyone actually prefer public transportation over cars if the roads can accommodate them. I don't think so.

so all these people either secretly prefer driving cars, or just have no other choice?

you know, you're talking about me among others[1], and the arrogance of your "I don't think so" is just... annoying.

[1] i haven't commented on this thread before, but i do commute to work by train, ~80km each way. i've been doing that for over a decade, and my employers have let me count the time spent on the train toward my on-clock time because i can and do work on the train. driving a car would mean wasting my time, and it would cost me more. not to mention that public transport is way safer than individual automotive transport.

>Time is something in very short supply.

Mostly because businesses demand every minute of it.

Time is ample if you're not stressed to the point of collapse all the time.

>..., and yet a totally stagnant economy. I mean I understand a lot of the reasons, but it's still weird.

Totally explainable by the fact that Japan has the world's fastest aging (and now shrinking) population. [1]

1950: 84 million

1975: 112 million

2000: 127 million

2025: 124 million

2050: 110 million

[1] http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/worldageing195...

Yes, the problem with ageing population is that a lot of your GDP growth which would otherwise go into disposable incomes etc instead goes to care for a lot of old people.

TBH virtually all developed economies have slowed down over the past 10+ years, I often wonder if this is the real reason, more than just the financial criss. The only spurts of growth seem to be either sudden windfalls from resource extraction booms or big credit runups that tend to leave a big hangover.

How is it different to have revenue going to services retirees need instead of going to new sports cars of big tvs?

An aging population is only a problem if you are broke and have no capital to use to finance your lifestyle. Japan is nothing like that - they are a rich country with divested interests in many industries that all output world class goods and services. Built by the people now entering retirement.

Worry about Japan when their per-capita starts slipping dramatically.

There's more to it than just available capital though.

A still-shrinking working-age population will have to look after a still-expanding retired population.

IIRC (no reference), Japanese pensioners on aggregate have lots of savings. However, they will surely be competing with one another for services rendered by the shrinking labor pool, so one would expect the costs of those services to rise, negating the effect of having lots of savings.

I live in Japan now and, unsurprisingly, the retirement home business appears to be booming, especially in and around Tokyo. But even if there are lots of retirement homes, they will have to be staffed. By robots perhaps?

Yeah, I agree. Robots for sure. If the cost of developing an AI that can do this is less than the cost of hiring scarce labor... in 2050? Sounds almost obvious now that you say it.

Hopefully they'll relax immigration requirements? Maybe from Southeast Asia and the Phillipines? They're very used to working in the hospitality industry, a lot of cruise staff are Filipinos for example.

>How is it different to have revenue going to services retirees need instead of going to new sports cars of big tvs

For one, the people buying those sports cars and big tvs are productive citizens and have decades of work and payments ahead of them...

Doesn't help them that the country overall has a pretty pervasive anti immigration stance... and longstanding xenophobia issues.

In some ways this might show the steady state of a developed economy. Other developed nations are growing in large part through immigration - if the whole world was developed and there was nowhere for immigrants to come from, it's not implausible that we would see something like this start to happen everywhere.

I hadn't thought about this much, but this is an excellent point. I imagine the only thing that would change this in the future is if we made child bearing and rearing a lot less burdensome than what it is right now.... but that seems like a pipe dream, even as I write it down. I imagine economics are only one part of the difficulty with having children; the emotional consequences are probably much more significant.

At least they are not waving flags to welcome radical conservatives escaping theire messed up countrys.

I don't know why you're being downvoted. The anti-immigration stance is a well known problem in Japan, relaxing it in a sane way would definitely solve some of their social services problems.

The downvotes are coming from people who think the West is racist and xenophobic and anything contrary to that narrative means downvotes. The fact of the matter is that the vast majority of the world exhibits some form of racism and in many countries, such as Japan, its institutionalize. The U.S. And U.K. get a bad rap on this issue for some reason, but take a few million migrants from all over the world and plop them into Tokyo or Beijing and let me know how it goes.

Is it being a "well know problem" how Japanese perceive it or how foreigners want them to think of it?

Their economy is based on copying things that worked in the U.S. In the 1980s people were worried based on Japan's rate of growth that it was going to overtake the U.S. Instead they just ran out of things to copy, and the growth completely flattened. At some point you can only grow by doing new things, and for whatever reason Japan has historically been very bad at that.

Sources...

Are you confusing them with China...?

Japàn economy is stagnant because of negative population growth. US births just went below replacement level immigrants are not being allowed in others are leaving I think US is heading in the same direction.

  immigrants are not being allowed in

The USA continues to absorb far more immigrants than any other nation on Earth.

Not per capita, not by a long shot

That's a little misleading. Yes, in absolute numbers, the US absorbs more immigrants; but that's kind of a pointless statement - obviously the absolute number of immigrants is highly correlated with the countries size (probably both in habitable area and in terms of current population). Amongst countries with similar development levels, the US immigration isn't particularly unusual.

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_d...

As a fraction of the total, many economically very roughly comparable countries are fairly similar:

  Ireland:       15.9
  Austria:       15.2
  Germany:       14.9
  United States: 14.3
  Sweden:        14.3
  Spain:	 14
  Norway:        13.8
  United Kingdom 13.2

Looking a little more broadly, some countries have a higher proportion:

  Saudi Arabia: 31.4
  Switzerland:  28.9
  Australia:    27.7 	
  Israel:       26.5
  Canada:       20.7

And then there some pretty extreme cases:

  United Arab Emirates: 83.7 (even in absolute numbers, this is an impressive number)
  Kuwait: 70

And the other extreme:

  China:     0.1
  Indonesia: 0.1
  India:     0.4
  Brazil:    0.9
  Japan:     1.9
  Pakistan:  2.2

It's fair to say that immigration has had a special impact on the US over its history, and of course the policy of treating all children born in the US as citizens is unusual (though it shouldn't be!). But in relative terms, the number of immigrants isn't particularly large.

The absolute number is all that matters. A person immigrating to a country with a low population has a disproportionate affect on that population compared to a country with a large population.

Also you're implying that immigration is good and desirable. That's certainly up for debate.

I didn't intend to imply that immigration is good or desirable; it just is. It's a fact of life. I merely wanted to point out that the ratio of immigrants to natives in the US isn't particularly unusual.

(I'd say it's obvious immigration has huge potential but also considerable risks to the host country). In the long run, I suspect immigration is almost always a positive.

What factors do you use to evaluate whether immigration is positive?

My guess that immigration is positive in the long run (I mean over timespans greater than a human life) isn't something to take seriously, I certainly don't ;-).

But the argument goes as follows:

- Long term immigration tends to happen where the it's supportable. People don't usually go somewhere they're likely to starve. (So there's generally going to be some feedback loop that prevents really crazy immigration excesses - at least usually, I'd guess).

- Countries/regions/whatever with greater population tend to in the long run have more influence and greater development that those with less.

- Diversity is a strength to a society (but not necessarily it's citizens!) for various reasons, but e.g. creativity and resilience in the face of a changing world are likely higher simply because you've got a better shot of finding the right person(s) at the right time for the right task. This is a bit speculative; but there are parallels in evolutionary biology and business, so it appears plausible to me.

- Choosing to migrate is a non-trivial affair. Migrants tend to therefore be more enterprising. At the very least, the ability to successfully migrate, stay, and raise the next generation is a kind of test of capacity. This is the converse of a brain-drain if you will. Having said that, just because somebody is "smart" doesn't mean they'll achieve much in their new life; after all, needing to adapt just isn't that easy, and the deck is stacked against them. But over generations at least you'd hope for sufficient integration to overcome that.

To be explicit: This is mere speculation; and even as far as that it only suggests general patterns. Not all migration might be positive; and it might take a long time for the benefits to materialize, and even if society is better off doesn't mean that those that lived through the integration process are better off; and even then it doesn't mean the old population is better off either (though you'd hope so). And of course it's all a little hypothetical since you won't be able to stop migration no matter what, so the interesting question is whether the way you manage it (or not) matters, and what those choices might be.

You brought up the interesting question of whether immigration is good (at least, I hadn't considered it quite like that before), so this is just my best guess.

Caveat lector and all ;-).

Thanks for your polite, well-thought reply. I used to be more pro-immigration/open borders but have since swung the other way. I'm glad that you (as I was) are open to new ideas. The mantra right now is immigration == good. Whenever something is taken to be true, such as that, I question the prevailing wisdom and ask, what if this weren't true? Or better yet, who is this good for? How does this help me in particular, or people in a similar situation? Etc....

Cheers!

The U.N. stats you quote count only legal immigrants. When you add credible estimates of those in the USA illegally, you're looking at as many as another million per year.

Visa overstays alone can exceed a half-million per year (over 527K in 2015 alone[0] for the most recent numbers available), and that number omits those known to have left later.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_immigration_to_the_Uni...

The US is not alone in having a lot of illegal immigrants. It's hard to say to what extent the US is exceptional in their number (again, taking into account the size of the US).

However, even if this is an exception, the number of illegal immigrants is still too small to catch up to countries such as australia (under the unrealistic assumption that australia has 0 illegal immigration).

Its a bit improper to call Japan stagnant. Effectively all global populations use GDP as a measure of success, but GDP is a pyramid scheme - growth relies on the population getting bigger, often to such a degree that stagnant per-capitas can still look like a "growing" economy just from new bodies taking up space in them.

That isn't the real kind of growth that makes peoples lives better. Look at per-capita instead. Since the 08 recession Japan has had consistent 1-2% per-capita growth, despite their population shrinking. They have problems, but none of the end of the world nonsense economists have been throwing around since the 80s in response to Japan not continuing the global fiction that we can just keep adding more people to fake growth numbers like that is guaranteed to lead to real quality of life improvements, especially in the information age when it is much more important to have the resources to educate and maximize the potential of the people you do have rather than try to spread resources out over more people who can possibly outright lose access to the higher degrees of technical knowledge needed to truly advance society at this point.

>Isn't it, like, super expensive though?

Compared to the US military spending for example? For a country that's geographically so remote and already so powerful that no other country even thinks of ever attacking?

That power stems from military spending, though. Not only that, America spends so much on its military to compensate for the fact that most of its allies spend significantly less on theirs; without the so-called pax Americana the world would look very different.

>Not only that, America spends so much on its military to compensate for the fact that most of its allies spend significantly less on theirs; without the so-called pax Americana the world would look very different.

That's a myth that Americans seem to believe firmly.

Like they're like parent figures to the world or something, exceptionalism at its worst, and the 21st century analogue to the "White Man's Burden".

As if any country would attack the EU for example, or even e.g. Germany alone.

In fact, most of the mess the planet is in (the middle east for example) is because of US intervention and fucking things up. In the past 2 decades, new training grounds for terrorists created in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and now Syria, all thanks to breaking up stable regimes there.

I strongly suspect that Europe would be spending more money on defense particularly against Russia and maybe China if America weren't backing them.

America also contributes to international military endeavors more than any other countries, like the UN peacekeepers. I'm not an expert by any means.

And really, you can't think of countries with more moral responsibility for the planet's current state? Not China, not the Soviet Union, none?

>I strongly suspect that Europe would be spending more money on defense particularly against Russia and maybe China if America weren't backing them.

And I strongly suspect that Europe has absolutely nothing to fear from both Russia and China.

>And really, you can't think of countries with more moral responsibility for the planet's current state? Not China, not the Soviet Union, none?

China absolutely none at all. USSR a little, but that ended in 1991 (so close to 3 decades now), and most of it was a piss match with the US in the first place.

> And I strongly suspect that Europe has absolutely nothing to fear from both Russia and China.

This is most certainly not True, as the Russian annexation of Crimea and the Troubles in Ukraine have so clearly demonstrated. Even if Russian might not want to annex more territory, without the backing of NATO, Russia could bully Western European countries more easily.

>This is most certainly not True, as the Russian annexation of Crimea and the Troubles in Ukraine have so clearly demonstrated.

You mean the Russian annexation of a part of Ukraine (a country in their border), namely the part with a majority of ethnic Russian citizens, who had a referendum in favor of it, and that only happened when the democratically elected government of Ukraine was overthrown by a sketchy coalition including bona fide Nazi sympathizers? I'm sure this proves that France, and Romania, Germany, Portugal, Malta, Albania, Greece, Italy, and all have a lot to fear from Russia...

It's especially funny considering US as some protector of Europe from Russia, considering that unlike the above very tame example, the US has occupied 2 countries in the past 2 decades, bombed in Eastern Europe, helped form a protectorate there, and helped destabilize a few more (e.g. Syria, Libya), taking Europeans in the NATO to along for the ride and boosting terrorism support in those areas (including against Europe).

>Even if Russian might not want to annex more territory, without the backing of NATO, Russia could bully Western European countries more easily.

Ever past the Cold War it has been the opposite: the NATO (a Cold War formation if there ever was one) instead of dismantling, got into expanding ever more into Eastern Europe and Russia's neighbors, and forever bully Russia into submission with sanctions, diplomatic pressure, etc.

Japan also has a ridiculously high appetite for rail transport. It's so high that they employ pushers to squish the public into the trains.

http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20170613-striking-photos-sh...

"Wolf ... visited a publisher in Tokyo with a portfolio of the images. “He just flicked through them in about 30 seconds, and he said ‘so what?’,”... “I said ‘what do you mean “so what?” – it’s a nightmare, don’t you see that?’ He said: ‘what do you mean it’s a nightmare, I’ve been doing this for 40 years of my life every day – it’s normal.’”

Packed trains like that are common during rush hours. I've been on Chicago "el" cars packed so full you couldn't even get an arm out to hold on to anything.

The good thing being that in this case, you do not need to hold anything. You are being held :)

Does Chicago hire people-pushers?

Plenty of videos available https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=japan+train+pus...

When I travelled to the US I was shocked at how squished public transport can be in New York, SF and LA (heh).

The biggest difference between packed trains in Japan and the U.S. is when "just one more person" tries to get on the train. In Japan, everybody will sigh and groan and shuffle around to make a bit more room. In America, the riders near the door will stiff-arm the guy back onto the platform.

"Next train, buddy..."

You think the US is bad? Take a look at Canada. We aren't even speculating about highspeed rail. Ottawa-Toronto might be possible, but have a look at what Vancouver-Calgary would entail. Vancouver-Ottawa would probably mean laying more highspeed rail than China's entire network.

Vancouver to Ottawa is maybe 4500 km. China has 20,000 km of high-speed train lines, and is planning another 15,000 km by 2025.

http://www.economist.com/news/china/21714383-and-theres-lot-...

Do you know how big china is?

It almost feels like our politicians secretly are determined to make U.S into a third world country. Bad transportation, bad education, bad healthcare, bad governance. System is built to prevent basic progress. Even the rich states like California, NY, NJ have major transportation issues. Will it be a surprise to anyone if we end up at the bottom in 10 years from now. Sure we have Google, Microsoft and Apple but can't evn get to office on time, can't afford good healthcare.

The problems affecting high-speed rail in the US are the same problems that prevent low-speed rail, streetcars, subways, and buses from being more common -- people don't see themselves using such things and so they don't want to pay for them.

In the Bay Area, the Caltrain commuter train runs from San Jose to San Francisco, through the downtown areas of most major cities in between. It is currently so popular that it is significantly over capacity every day. Yet it is still a constant political battle to get funding to improve the system, even though the Bay Area is one of the most educated and politically liberal parts of the country, where support for public transit is higher than many other places.

Sometimes I think we would have much more transit funding overall if we set aside part of the transit budget to send Americans to other countries on vacation, so they will return knowing how good public transit can actually be.

I do not think this is true. I think people have an easier time seeing themselves in an Acela car than they do in a Jetblue seat --- which is part of why the Acela is so popular. People don't drive from DC to NYC so they can signal their independence. Pretty much, they don't drive from DC to NYC at all.

Where HSR is feasible and built out in the US, it gets used. The problem is, HSR isn't feasible for the most economically important routes in the US.

You can get from London to Paris in 3 hours on a train, and from Paris to Frankfurt in about 5. Almost as a rule, the most economically central European cities are closer to each other by rail than the most important American cities are --- excepting the Eastern Seaboard, where we have rail --- by air.

Have you ridden Acela and done so frequently? It's not that great of an experience of you haven't. Expensive and often delayed.

Expensive, often delayed, people noisy and talking loudly in the so-called "quiet car", slow to non-existent internet connectivity, etc.

Do you rely on provided internet? Doesn't your phone LTE work well?

"People don't drive from DC to NYC so they can signal their independence. Pretty much, they don't drive from DC to NYC at all."

Having driven that route many times over taking the train I can tell you this is false. The prices of Acela is more then double what is normal in Europe for similar length train routes and better service. It is cheaper to rent a car and drive even for a single person and if you have 2 or more people it is significantly cheaper.

"Where HSR is feasible and built out in the US, it gets used."

Where is this ? Epcot center ? I don't know of any actual high speed rail in the United States.

Acela most certainly isn't ...

Ehh, i don't buy this. It may be true for continental rail but not regional.

The really frustrating thing about Caltrain is that it shouldn't even be that dependent on subsidies. Caltrain riders are mostly affluent professionals commuting from the peninsula suburbs. These people (and I am one of them) are perfectly capable of paying for upgrades directly via fares, but for political reasons prices are kept far too low.

Might need to put some provisos on those plane tickets. I've known some Americans who have traveled to Europe planning to just take Uber everywhere, even when it would be faster and cheaper to take transit, not to mention more fulfilling. (The U.K. transit employees who don't mention the Oyster card aren't helping either.)

> people don't see themselves using such things

What? You think people don't want to take train that goes ~200 mp/h ?

Riding the bullet train in China when I was there in 1998 was awesome!

I'm on a vacation in Italy and just used one this morning from Florence to Bologna with Trenitalia. A lot of positive things: The ride was 35 minutes long, doesn't include any security theater, you can arrive the station 10 minutes before the departure and hop in a couple of minutes, comfortable, roomy, from city center to almost city center, and many more. And the train continued to all the way to Turin, visiting many cities including Milan in 2-3 hours. Cost was 16ish euros, I guess (deducing from a total payment for four people).

Doing the same though air travel would add at least a total of 2-3 hours for the whole thing. Don't know about the cost comparison but the user satisfaction is there.

Frankly the lack of security frightens me. It's only cool til someone stands up on your car and pulls out an AR. Then suddenly it's "what were they thinking."

Happened in France, fortunately with no casualties...

So should every building have scanners and metal detectors? What makes a train different?

You can't escape a train very easily by comparison to a building.

You can't escape a crowded train station, especially when underground or a skyscraper when you are on a higher floor. This type of situation can't be controlled everywhere without constantly living in fear. There just isn't any point in trying and usually the security is pointless theatre anyways.

Should we add security for buses too then?

It could be argued, I think, yes. I do understand your point, it is something I ponder often.

>It's only cool til someone stands up on your car and pulls out an AR.

This is the case for any crowded public space. It is unavoidable.

> It's only cool til someone stands up on your car and pulls out an AR

It continues to be cool for the thousands of other trips that day and the millions of other trips afterwards where that doesn't happen.

Better to build a society that doesn't create people who feel the need to mow down a train car full of people than to treat everyone else like a criminal a priori.

I agree 100%, but I don't think we're in that society yet.

And what would the cost/benefit analysis of adding security be? Not just the cost of security staff and equipment, but from slowing everyone down and the implicit economic impact on society.

Not taking this into account is immoral, because those resources could potentially be spent saving peoples lives in more efficient ways. Terrorism is extremely rare way of dying.

I'm extremely skeptical that this accounting will even show a benefit for airport security, but I don't think airport security is mainly about stopping terrorists. It's about controlling what people bring on board the plane, as there's a lot of things that could inadvertantly cause trouble on a plane. The same can not be said for trains to the same degree.

Also, planes themselves can be used as effective weapons if taken over. Don't think that goes for trains, especially where they're electrified.

Thalys train attack? It was an AKM, not an AR.

A simple metal detector would've caught a long gun, even with incompetent security personnel. By only allowing small "carry on" bags in the passenger carriages (storing larger "checked" bags in a separate freight car) the attack space is limited to what can fit in a handbag or backpack. It won't catch everything, but wrt terrorist attacks trains are safer than airplanes.

You don't need to go full TSA and make grandma take off her shoes or racially profile people to have decent security.

This topic comes up routinely on Hacker News, and it's no surprise why: there are a lot of Europeans interacting with a lot of Americans here, and European high speed rail is an enviable asset for the continent.

But last time we talked about this, it seemed to me that if you looked into the details, it was clear why we don't have HSR in the US. Even assuming we built a network that operated at Shanghai Maglev speeds, at the distances the network would need to operate, air travel would remain significantly more economical.

In a thread 3 years ago, I made a list of the top US cities by GDP, and then broke out the crow-flies ground distances between them:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8713324

Of the 55 edges on this graph, only 6 were 700 miles apart or less. Several of those are already served by the Acela.

There's a definite advantage to rail over air, in that rail can deposit you right in the middle of the city you're heading to. But that advantage can't make up for the fact that no train is going to compete with a plane for trips between the largest US cities.

I'm not convinced that the numbers in your link are quite so conclusive.

First, with stops factored in, the Acela makes about 75 mph. This is competitive with driving, not flying. There's a lot of room for improvement right there.

Second, I'm not sure that distance between the biggest cities matters. Is there actually a ton of traffic between Philly and Los Angles, for example? You could easily imagine several unconnected networks (SF-LA-SD, for example, along with an upgraded Boston-DC route, or something between Austin, Houston, and Dallas).

In a similar vein, you could imagine connecting one major city to a bunch of somewhat smaller ones. For example, Chicago to Madison, Milwaukee, or even Minneapolis. This wouldn't necessarily replace air travel, but it would integrate those cities more tightly and might replace a lot of driving. Madison to Chicago even becomes a (somewhat) reasonable commute!

At European rail speeds, a train from Chicago to Minneapolis --- which, as a Chicagoan who likes Minneapolis, I wish existed! --- would take 6-7 hours. A flight from Chicago to Minneapolis takes just an hour and a half, and there are so many of them that catching one is no harder than catching a train.

On the list I provided, where do you see major opportunities for us to build out rail? I know that there are some! I just don't think there are many, or that it will ever make sense for us to have a densely connected HSR network like Europe.

6-7 hours can't possibly be correct, that's how long it takes driving.

Google maps says Minneapolis to Chicago is 409 miles, so three hours seems like a pretty achievable goal. Also, the flight is 1.5 hours, but the actual travel time is probably more like 3-4 when you factor in getting to the airport, waiting for the TSA, etc. Plus, you're moving around and being annoyed for a lot of that time, whereas you can plunk down on the train and nap/work/etc.

I think aiming for a comprehensive network right out of the gate is bad idea. Instead, build it now where it makes sense now...and build more later where/when/if it makes sense later. You could even add some fairly short routes. If someone can get Boston to Providence/Wooster/Manchester down to ~20-30 minutes, it'd be a huge win for that entire metro area. People already do those commutes but they're on the longish side.

If we're talking modern high speed rail speeds, aka 360kph or ~220mph and ~400 miles between Minneapolis and Chicago. How the hell did you arrive at 6-7 hours between them?

And what is the door to door time? 1.5 hours to fly + how much waiting in line, going through the tsa bs, having to go from the airport to downtown...

The distance between Chicago and Minneapolis is slightly higher than the distance between Paris and Montpellier.

For those cities in France, the time travel from city center to city center is about 3 hours and half by train, with 2 stops on the way. It beats both car and air travel, since you can just to show up at the station 5 minutes before the train departs, and don't need to go through security.

Also, the cheap tickets cost less than 50 euro, and you can get between 25% and 50% discount if you are less than 25 years old.

Realistically you'll never get tickets that cheap unless you plan weeks in advance, though.

The French train system is expensive and too centralized. You'll find many examples of how great French trains are but everyone only ever talks about traveling to or from Paris. And sure, it's great and convenient for Parisians.

But when you want to connect two mid-size, non-Paris cities that are more than ~500 km apart, travel by train becomes a time-consuming and expensive affair. For instance, taking the train from Nancy to Grenoble costs about 120€ if you're lucky; it forces you to take a massive detour through Paris and change train stations there. Changing stations in Paris is stressful and takes at least half an hour - since there are no shuttles, you must take the subway (and change subway lines too!)

All in all, what should have been a 3 hour journey becomes a costly 7-8 hour ordeal, thanks to the extreme centralization of the French rail network. Many people are getting fed up with this -- carpooling across long distances is becoming popular because it can often be faster and much cheaper than rail!

Just an annecdote, it is possible to regularly get tickets that cheap if using igtv or ouigo. I was in Montpelier last month and found a ticket for 25€ to Paris.

A lot of people responding to this with the idea that the train would follow the shortest route possible.

None of the proposed routes have been that. Many of them have included detouring through cities like Rochester, MN (home of the Mayo Clinic), and taking other weird routes.

> Chicago to Madison, Milwaukee, or even Minneapolis

I think the reason a hsr line like this does not exist for these routes is simply because the monetary demand/value isn't there.

Going from Tokyo to Kyoto and back is probably the single most used rail line on the planet in terms of value. That one line is enough to drive an impressive chunk of the entire nation of Japan's economy. And along the way on that route, there are tons of other slightly-smaller cities that make the route extremely efficient.

But Chicago to Madison, Chicago to Milwaukee? There just isn't enough value there. Anyone who WANTS to get from Chicago to any of those places on rare occasion can just drive (the US beats probably everyone else, certainly Japan, at that). Anyone who NEEDS to get from Chicago to those places can fly or take the slow train. And that route is not powering a significant portion of the US economy, like the Kyoto-Tokyo route. And besides some suburbs, there's really nothing along those lines to make them efficient. It would be billions of dollars invested to get people from Chicago to a cities that aren't very important to Chicago. And if any of those cities start to fail, that line is basically useless now, since there's nothing else along it, it only goes to one place.

The problem is in the layout, really -- the economy is powered by New York to Chicago, Chicago to LA, Dallas to Seattle, etc. And these are distances where a plane is going to give you advantages over high speed rail -- ESPECIALLY considering there is basically a whole bunch of nothing between the cities, as opposed to the unending line of coastal cities that live along the Kyoto-Tokyo line.

One look at a population density map shows exactly why Japan's rail line is so highly efficient: http://www.mappi.net/japon_densite.gif

You could draw a straight line that goes through 99% of Japan's population. And that's exactly what they did, but with a railway.

I know I didn't talk about Europe here, but I don't know much about Europe. Though my rough understanding of European geography tells me that it is also more efficiently organized than the US, and therefore also more suited for HSR.

Maybe.

On the other hand, we also barely have high-speed rail between New York and Boston or DC, and those cities (and travel between them) do drive a huge chunk of the US economy.

Chicago-Madison is interesting because they're too far apart to commute between: the drive is ~150 miles/2.5 hrs each way and train is, inexplicably, much slower. If it instead took an hour or less to get between city centers, it's suddenly doable. Similar arguments might apply to Boston-Manchester and other pairs of big-medium cities. Someone would have to run the numbers, but I think HSR has the potential to create demand, rather than just shift it from cars and planes.

> In a thread 3 years ago, I made a list of the top US cities by GDP,

That's really not a useful analysis, you could make the same sort of list of London, Berlin, Madrid, Turin, Istanbul, Dublin, Athens, Moscow, Budapest etc, and demonstrate that a high speed network is useless in Europe, but nevertheless it exists. You need to do the same with the 100 biggest cities, that's where the system is most effective. Of course, just as in Europe, most of the journeys will be better done by plane, that's not the point, high speed rail is just another option which is particularly useful for particular circumstances. It would be substantially less useful in the US than in Europe, because as you say the distances are greater, but it definitely seems like it should exist more than it does.

"In a thread 3 years ago, I made a list of the top US cities by GDP, and then broke out the crow-flies ground distances between them"

I agree with this sentiment. However, I don't think that connecting large cities together is the most interesting thing we can do with rail ... rather, we can find corridors of opportunity that open up a lot of movement and economic activity that is hindered by being just a bit too far to commute ...

For instance: Duluth->MPLS->DesMoines->KCMO

For instance: Cheyenne->FtCollins->Denver->CoSprings->Pueblo[1]

In each of those instances there is only one large metro area but there are "junior" areas that could benefit greatly by gaining the ability to commute ...

You really can't commute from Duluth (where people need jobs) to Minneapolis (where jobs are) ... or from Pueblo to Denver ... but things change if it's just a 40 minute train ride away ...

[1] With the admission that Denver->CoSprings is logistically difficult due to elevation change on the route ...

It's true, air travel is more economical. Here in Spain we have thousands of high speed rail trains... and the truth is that even though a ticket is not cheap, not even the line Madrid-Barcelona (which can cost 80€ for a return ticket) is profitable... even when that's the most used high speed train in Spain.

So, yes, it's a great system for the people who use it, and I like the fact that we have such a thing, but it's actually supported by taxes and not that used by the general population.

Unpopular opinion, but I really don't see why we should want high speed rail in the first place. It's slower than flying on a commuter airline, but the tickets cost nearly as much, and it's also enormously expensive to build. Then there's also the issue of throughput and last mile logistics. You're limited to putting people in a few train cars, as opposed to a continuous stream of people on a freeway. Being a high speed train, stops are necessarily few and far between, so once you arrive at the station you still have to figure out how to travel tens of miles to where you really want to go.

My perception is that it's a huge money pit for something that's quite frankly inferior to our current infrastructure. We would be much better off improving our current insterstate system.

Some of the negatives you're listing are only true in America. In Asia and Europe, high-speed train is much cheaper than train, faster when accounting for security and check-in, and 10x more comfortable. You also don't generally get abused by TSA and airline workers.

Rail is superior to highways on quite a few dimensions:

- faster (200 Km/h and up)

- much lower accident per passenger mile

- in theory it should be cheaper (it isn't for a variety of reasons, many of those are political)

- it allows you to work while you're in motion (much harder in a car or a plane)

- more land efficient

- connects the centers of cities rather than the outskirts which in many cases removes that last mile problem because the majority of traffic is city-to-city

For the United States the situation is better served anyway by comparing rail and air travel, air travel scales better as the distance increases, is (roughly) comparable in cost per ticket and tends to be faster on longer distances.

Rail is mostly used for cargo. Rail is about 4 times more efficient than a truck is fuel wise. Labor wise, more than an order of magnitude. A 100-unit train can carry 10,000 tons whereas a truck is closer to 20 tons.

The context of the discussion is high speed rail, which is for passengers.

There's no reason that high speed rail couldn't work for both, however

There is relatively little economic incentive to make high speed rail work for cargo. Cargo that's large enough to go by rail tends to go for the lowest price per ton that can be found, it competes with long haul trucks, barges and oceangoing ships. It does not compete with air cargo (which tends to focus on high value and light stuff).

There are plenty of reasons:

* the weight of freight significantly impacts the track's lifecycle, and HSR tend to be on the "light cargo" side with a train being about 10% cargo by weight

* the bulk and varying shape makes it impossible to build high-speed trains with any interesting flexibility and capability as they need to be highly profiled

* and you don't want your high-speed passenger traffic to be held up by freight.

* the cost/benefit calculation makes no sense, it's much more price-efficient to carry freight using gigantic regular-speed trainsets than using small high-speed ones, and what little freight is so time-sensitive that you need to put it on an HSR can be put there as a special case

None of the big HSR countries use it for anything resembling serious freight, the only one which came even remotely close was France which had 3.5 mail trainsets, which were wound down and ultimately retired in 2015: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SNCF_TGV_La_Poste

China has some freight going on HSR nowadays, though they are mostly on slower lines (i.e., 200-250km/h, so 125-155mph IIRC) that were opened on new routes.

But yes, weight is a big deal: the LGV in France, for example, have a maximum axle loading of 17 tons. Much of the US freight network is over 35 tons, from memory.

Rail is only mostly used for cargo in the United States because there hardly is any passenger rail left. In the rest of the world rail is mostly used for passengers, and also (usually at night) used for cargo.

Yep, passenger miles Amtrak rail in the US is about 1% of air.

This is true in the US, but is the opposite in Europe and China. (I don't know about Japan, the other HSR powerhouse).

Trucks are closer to 40 tons, actually.

And many shippers will absolutely not use rail freight for a variety of reasons in the USA, including slow delivery time (can't ship produce and other perishables easily), lackluster quality of service from the rail lines (they want coal, oil, large commodity business, not smaller firms), higher chance of damage; as well as not meeting minimum qty/volume for it to be worth it.

Something like 40 tons, 80,000 lb max loaded. But more like 20 ton average cargo payload (5 axle).

https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/reports/tswstudy/Vol2-Chapter3.pdf

As for speed, it's interesting to compare trucks with slow steaming.

> Slow steaming refers to the practice of operating transoceanic cargo ships, especially container ships, at significantly less than their maximum speed. An analyst at National Ports and Waterways Institute stated in 2010 that nearly all global shipping lines were using slow steaming to save money on fuel.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow_steaming

That is Federal but there are many exemptions, especially in the western states. For instance, Rocky Mountain doubles can go to 120,000 and certain other combinations even more.

You forgot one important point: Anyone can take rail. In order to drive, you already have to own a car (and be able to drive). Many people, especially those who live in cities, don't have cars, so taking a train just costs the price of the ticket, whereas driving requires renting or buying a car. Unless you're traveling very frequently, it's cheaper to not own a car.

I don't think high speed rail would help here. We already have normal speed trains that are affordable, and I'd imagine high speed rails would just be more expensive.

Unless you're talking about the highly possible near future where even the middle class doesn't has cars, but would pay more for a train ticket that's faster.

Ah good one, totally missed that point. Thank you.

Aren't most cities more expensive to live in than the cost of owning a car in the suburbs?

There are other costs associated with living in the suburbs than just the cost of a car. There is also commute time, which - if your time isn't valuable to you - need not be a problem but for many people this wasted time is a real issue.

And the same time spent in a train can be productive. In a car, it's just a complete waste.

On which systems is it the norm for train commuters to get seats? Or can they be productive in standing room somehow?

I'm in the Netherlands, where I spend some extra money to get a 1st class ticket (because that has the room to work on a laptop), and I nearly always have a seat in that. I guess during rush hour about a fifth of the rest has to stand, true.

Even if you have to stand now and then, you can use an ereader.

I think there'd be riots if any US city proposed class-segregated seats on its public transit system. Though I would love it.

I'd pay almost as much for a guaranteed seat on BART as I would for a car.

Some of the commuter rail systems in the US do have class-based systems. Heavy rail (rapid transit aka "the subway") does not, but that's more about the particularities of how heavy rail works.

We tolerate different pricing for various classes of seats in concerts, trains, buses, airplanes, pretty much everything imaginable. I don't see why commuter rail would be any different.

Heavy rail is a taxpayer-funded government service, provided by governments with particularly liberal electorates (large dense cities). One of its key selling points, among certain constituents, is as an equalizer: getting the rich out their Audis and into the same miserable conditions as everyone else.

I think most people who can't afford first class on airlines do resent it, but since airlines aren't state-owned and, more importantly, it's always been there (not a new proposal), there's not much they can do.

Look at the popular outrage about scalping. People absolutely feel that you shouldn't be able to buy your way into a good seat, and instead ought to be lucky/first.

> provided by governments with particularly liberal electorates [...] One of its key selling points, among certain constituents, is as an equalizer: getting the rich out their Audis and into the same miserable conditions as everyone else.

It's hard to take what you're saying seriously when you're so clearly biased towards one end of the political spectrum.

The actual truth is much less political. Cities like New York City are way too dense for everyone to drive a personal vehicle, full stop, your non sequitur about Audis notwithstanding. Mass transit is the only transportation method that scales to handle a population the size of a large, dense city. Individual vehicle transportation does not. It doesn't matter if you're rich or poor, whether you're driving an Audi or a beater; if you're trying to drive to your job in the heart of Manhattan from the suburbs it's going to take you hours. Mass transit is the better choice for almost everyone.

I guess it depends on what you mean by productivity, but I can read a book while standing, I can read and respond to emails, and I can actually zone out and relax.

In a car, I have to be on moderately high alert the entire time I'm driving, especially in traffic.

Every commuter rail system I can think of provides seats for passengers.

Every commuter rail system I can think of has at least a 2:1 ratio of passengers to seats during commute hours.

What systems are you thinking of? Because every commuter rail system I can think of has seats for almost everyone.

MTA, CTA, Muni, BART, Caltrain.

Every time I've ever taken MTA Metro-North there's been more than enough seats available. It's one of the systems I was going to mention as having seats for passengers. There isn't even enough room in those trains for twice as many people to stand as have seats; it's basically an all-seating arrangement with an aisle for reaching the seats down the middle. Are you sure about your examples?

Edit: And it's the exact same for the Long Island Railroad, which is the other major commuter rail system run by the MTA. They have a third system, the Staten Island Railway, but I've never taken it and thus can't comment.

I guess I'm talking about connectivity for outlying urban and inner suburban neighborhoods ("the subway") more than regional rail systems like LIRR or, in Chicago's case, Metra.

It may actually be a good strategy to live even further from the city if it lets you switch from a crowded urban transit system to a more spacious suburban one.

Commuter rail tends to be more expensive than heavy rail too.

It's a good question though (let's put aside costs for now): How much more time would you be willing to spend on commuter rail over heavy rail if it means getting a seat? I'm not sure. I think I'd rather be seated for 40 minutes than standing for thirty, but at an hour, I might just prefer the shorter trip. You can still easily listen to podcasts on crowded heavy rail, or get good at holding a Kindle in one hand.

I have never had to stand on MetroNorth, even during the morning rush.

Look at anywhere around London or Paris, for example; plenty of routes are crush loaded at rush hour. Heck, Tokyo is famous for some lines having people to push people further into each car.

Those are intra-city subways not commuter rail systems that are largely discussed above.

The delineations at play here for those who don't know, in order of scale, are light rail (typically at-grade), heavy rail/rapid transit/subway/metro (all the same thing), commuter rail, then regional/long-distance rail.

Even the mediocre VTA light rail in Silicon Valley has people standing during rush hour. although that is exacerbated by the California reluctance to sit right next to someone. Here when half the seats are sat in the rest of the people stand unless it is a big group like a field trip.

You can't complain about standing if there are still seats available though ...

Also, you don't see that here in NYC. People are gonna sit down if there's space available. Unless it's next to a crazy homeless person, but I've only ever experienced that on heavy rail, not commuter rail.

In cities with the worst traffic problems, sure.

In smaller cities, it takes less time to get downtown from the suburbs than it does to get across downtown on foot or even a bike. (Buses there move at walking speed in the average case, or bicycle speed in the best case, but only come every half hour or so).

The differential in costs between living in the city core versus in the suburbs is much different for such cities, however. It may well be reversed entirely, as in many small cities that don't suffer from bad traffic, living in newer suburbs is more desirable than living in a potentially decaying urban core.

I'd be spending 2-3x as much on parking alone as I'm currently spending on my rail commute.

Cost of car ownership = cost of car + insurance + fuel + storage + maintenance + misc tickets and administrative fees.

Not really, you just get more space outside of the cities.

I have some friends that have moved to upstate New York from Brooklyn and rent is the same, just with a lot more space. However, you then have to add on $400/month for the commuter rail along with an extra hour per day of commuting, plus owning a car and needing to drive everywhere instead of walking. It actually ends up being more expensive, but the trade off is getting more space (if you care about that for some reason).

You can pretty easily convert "the rent is the same, just with a lot more space" to "the rent is cheaper" by having roommates.

Or to "the rent is the same, but I don't have to have roommates" by not having them.

There are only a couple cities in the US where it is realistic for a normal (i.e. able to afford a car) person to live without a car, and most of those cities are already served by Acela.

There are way more than two cities in the US where it's reasonable to not own a car. What makes you say it's only two?! Just because you can't imagine doing it doesn't mean that other people aren't perfectly content to do so. Here are some cities that I happen to know of offhand where people I know live perfectly "normal" (to use your word) lives without cars, and this is just in the northeast of the US: Boston, NYC, Jersey City, Philadelphia, Baltimore, DC, Alexandria, Bethesda, and Arlington.

I can easily afford a car, but I don't own one because I don't have need for one very frequently, so it's simply cheaper to rent when I need one rather than have to worry about owning one 24/7.

I think this is the Acela corridor he was talking about. He probably misspoke when saying "a couple" - some people interpret that strictly as "two", while others interpret it loosely as "a handful" - but "most of these" implies that he meant the second meaning.

That interpretation doesn't make sense to me though. The Acela corridor is used for longer distance transportation -- anywhere else you'd simply fly. Neither has much to do with owning or not owning a car. I live in NYC, don't have a car, and I take any of bus/train/plane depending on where I'm going and if it's on the Northeast Corridor. If I lived in, say, Austin, I'd simply just always take a plane to any of those places, but my car ownership situation wouldn't necessarily change.

It's true that, along the Acela corridor, there are normal people who can't use the freeways to travel between cities for lack of car ownership. So the Acela is helpful.

Almost everywhere else that isn't the Acela corridor, people will have cars by default, so rail doesn't meaningfully increase access to inter-city travel over existing freeways.

This is where we still disagree. There are plenty of big cities that are not along the Acela corridor where people do not own cars by default (e.g. people living in downtown Chicago).

I don't understand your argument anyway. People own cars because they need them frequently for daily activities like commuting or errands. Infrequent longer distance trips are not the primary drivers of car ownership at all. If you don't own a car for your daily life then you certainly aren't going to own one just for the occasional road trip; no, you'll take a train/bus/plane in that case, or even just rent one.

Also, I live in NYC, and most of the places I go to are too far to drive to anyway. So having a car wouldn't be helpful. I'm renting a car in Las Vegas next month for DEF CON, but if I owned a car here I certainly wouldn't drive all the way there. I go to DC regularly, but even if I had a car I wouldn't want to use it for that trip as I find long drives unpleasant and would much rather read a book on a bus for four hours.

> people living in downtown Chicago

You can get to every significant Midwestern city on Amtrak from downtown Chicago. In fact, one of Amtrak's main weaknesses is that you often have to transfer through Chicago when it doesn't make geographic sense. That doesn't apply to Chicagoans. The Amtrak map is enlightening [0].

You can even do some train trips from downtown Chicago that make absolutely no sense in the era of flight (the rail tickets cost more than airfare and take 10x as long). I'd argue that anywhere you can't easily get on a train from Chicago is either too small to support rail service, or too far to be convenient by any mode except air.

There are a couple other places where people tend to live without cars, like the Bay Area. We already have good passenger rail service to Sacramento/Davis, and the SF/LA corridor is being developed.

>People own cars because they need them frequently for daily activities like commuting or errands

Correct, and when they already own cars, they already have easy access to inter-city travel (within distances that would be convenient by rail) via the interstates. Building HSR on these routes could provide a more convenient alternative, but the improvement is minor and incremental.

We need a massive investment in rail in this country, but we need it on urban and commuter systems. Inter-city travel already works almost as well as we could reasonably expect it to.

[0] https://www.amtrak.com/ccurl/948/674/System0211_101web,0.pdf

Rail also doesn't have taxiing time, takeoff/landing time nor baggage time. And no seat belts. I love it, but I also understand much of America is located farther apart than other countries. Yet, we should prepare for denser days.

And no TSA which is a huge win. You can bring your devices without worrying about having them inspected and potentially cloned.

  You can bring your devices without worrying about having them inspected

Why not?

True, hostage-taking is generally not a risk on rail (Pelham 1-2-3 aside), but HSR is just as tempting a target for terrorism.

Imagine a detonation that derails an HSR from elevated rail, at speed, in an urban setting.

The easiest way to derail a train is to manipulate its tracks, inspecting passengers would do nothing to prevent this.

I suspect that by the time we could build a high speed rail network in the US (say 30-40 years, minimum) autonomous vehicles on the freeway will be the superior option. There's no fundamental reason that road vehicles couldn't exceed 200kph, just that humans are completely incapable of piloting safely at anywhere near those speeds. Once the need for a forward-looking pilot is gone you could design vehicles completely around the comfort of the occupants.

And, better than HSR, the same vehicle can go door-to-door.

> here's no fundamental reason that road vehicles couldn't exceed 200kph

Actually, there is: energy costs for road traffic go up as the square of the velocity, for rail this is much better because there is only one (very aerodynamic) front section for as many carriages as you want to put behind the loc and steel-on-steel has much better rolling resistance than rubber-on-asphalt or concrete.

That's a fair point, what's the energy cost of building thousands of miles of new railways, rather than using existing freeways? (okay, I'm being a little facetious)

With regard to aerodynamics, I am assuming that following distances for advanced autonomous vehicles will be minimal. They could maybe drive bumper-to-bumper as long as all cars in the ... er ... train were similarly capable.

You'd want to physically couple those cars because should any one of them unexpectedly lose locomotion, they'll be a huge train wreck.

Track costs far less (in money and energy) to build and maintain than freeway.

Unlike roads, fixed rail is virtually guaranteed not to be where you are, or to go where you want to go.

There is a reason the US isn't well-connected by rail, and it has nothing to do with loony conspiracy theories about General Motors buying all the tracks up.

> Unlike roads, fixed rail is virtually guaranteed not to be where you are, or to go where you want to go.

For no reason except the political. Go to any country in Europe, and you'll find that even the shopping malls have railway sidings and not just truck loading bays.

To us, 200 years seems like a long time. To you, 200 kilometers seems like a long distance.

Dude, I'm American.

Then you should know why it's not practical to run rails to every grocery store and dry cleaner in every town in the US.

I will never understand the obsession with fixed-rail transit on this site. It's interesting to observe, but it's never been satisfactorily explained. Is it just a matter of people never having been out of the Bay Area in their lives?

In an age where personal mobility is becoming more important rather than less, when costs associated with large-scale civic construction projects have skyrocketed and completion times have come to be measured in decades, and when networked fleets of self-driving cars are almost literally just around the corner, rail transit in the general case is about the dumbest thing ever. But I recognize that this is essentially a religious argument, and that you're equally certain you're right. Not much we can do but vote accordingly, I guess.

> Then you should know why it's not practical to run rails to every grocery store and dry cleaner in every town in the US.

Then I know that track costs less to install and maintain than roads. If it isn't practical to run track, it isn't practical to run roads.

Then I know that track costs less to install and maintain than roads. If it isn't practical to run track, it isn't practical to run roads.

I don't see how that can be true in the general case. Around here, in the Seattle area, a recent 34-mile light rail installation cost about $368 million. Four-lane roads cost about $500K per mile these days, from what I can tell. (And yes, that seems unrealistically low by an order of magnitude -- I think the sources I Googled up are referring only to initial costs, or costs associated with building rural Interstates.)

Our next big rail project, ST3, will install 62 miles of rail over 20+ years at a cost of over $50 billion.

Rail serves a tiny contingent of the population at enormous expense, effectively rooting them to the spot in the process. It has never really been shown to be effective at removing cars from the roads, certainly not in proportion to its price.

There has to be a better way. There may not be, right now, but there darned sure will be by the time the megaprojects we're considering today are complete and ready for service.

> Our next big rail project, ST3, will install 62 miles of rail over 20+ years at a cost of over $50 billion.

Good basis for comparison. Because you see, for a typical freeway, a billion per mile is the cost.

And that's just installation.

Add in the cost to maintain the roads, and they lose to tracks hands down. Tracks don't need to be resurfaced. And track beds don't need a resurfacing just to get inspected.

(You're also missing the added cost for the overhead wiring if you're going to compare against electrified rail.

Good basis for comparison. Because you see, for a typical freeway, a billion per mile is the cost.

Where do you get that? Obviously we got more than 500 miles of freeway for the $500B (inflation-adjusted) that the Eisenhower Interstate System cost us. We got about 50,000 miles, which works out to $10M/mile.

So something seems to have made both highway and rail construction cost ludicrous amounts of money, if you're right about the $1B/mile figure. I don't think you are, though -- that amount is what I've heard cited for the most expensive mile of highway in the country, which supposedly is the stretch of I-90 that crosses Mercer Island. I'd have to throw a [Citation Needed] flag on the billion-dollar-per-mile figure, in the general case. If we're really spending that much on roads these days, somebody needs to figure out where all that money is going.

how about those volvo systems that line up auto cars behind each-other?

You still have induced drag from low pressure areas unless you design your cars so they're more box-like (i.e., the front of one car matches up with the rear of another, without any bonnet/hood/etc. or similar).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTJZEK4JP0k

There are so many opportunities to save energy with self-driving cars that I suspect this point will not be a clear win.

But that assumes we do the right thing by constructing a standardized network and enforcing conformance with it, so they can behave more like high-speed train segments and less like individual vehicles. Here in the US, we generally do the right thing, but only after trying everything else first.

> There's no fundamental reason that road vehicles couldn't exceed 200kph

There sorta is. Air resistance and tyre/pavement rolling resistance get mighty expensive at that sort of speed, and the need to carry along energy storage makes this even more problematic.

High-speed rail vehicles amortise, over the whole train, the part of the drag that comes from the frontal area. Automobiles cannot do this.

Once you've created a curve-free, very flat, grade-separated controlled access freeway for your 250kph cars, you've...got most of what you need for high-speed rail anyway. At that point you might as well just build some rails and overhead line and buy some TGV rolling stock.

Autonomous vehicles won't be superior to high speed rail due to much worse space efficiency and induced demand putting a strain on road infrastructure.

Even if autonomous cars are smaller than the ones we have now, they still take up too much space. Autonomous cars will expand the amount of drivers as one no longer needs a license, and the amount of cars will increase. This new demand will cause increased road congestion unless an expensive expansion of the road network takes place, an we know from induced demand that road expansion doesn't fix congestion in the long term anyway.

Automobile oriented infrastructure doesn't scale whether the cars are autonomous or not, and it's a bad idea to base the entire transportation system around them.

>There's no fundamental reason that road vehicles couldn't exceed 200kph

Then a blown tire will be a deadly accident.

A blown tyre is probably deadly even at normal speeds of ~130km/h. They don't blow very often though.

>in theory it should be cheaper

Rail is heavily subsidised in many European countries. But a well-run and affordable rail service is such an essential motor of economic well-being that subsidies are generally accepted as essential by governments and most of the public.

For an example of what what happens when more and more of the cost of a ticket is shouldered by the commuter, look at the UK. We have some of the highest rail fares in the whole of Europe.

Below is research from the TUC (Trades Union Congress) in the UK who campaign against rail privatisation. Whether or not you agree with their stance on privatisation, the cost of a monthly season ticket in the UK is enormous.

Monthly season ticket comparison: UK vs Europe:

UK: Luton to London St. Pancras (35 miles) £387

UK: Liverpool Lime Street to Manchester Piccadilly (32 miles) £292

Germany: Dusseldorf to Cologne (28 miles) £85

France: Mantes-la-Jolie to Paris (34 miles) £61

Italy: Anzione to Rome (31 miles) £61

Spain: Aranjuez to Madrid (31 miles) £75

Source: https://www.tuc.org.uk/industrial-issues/transport-policy/uk...

That's hardly related to privatisation though. Railways are not that profitable. The government could up subsidies if it wanted to to reduce ticket prices without nationalising the routes: it already enforces price controls.

One reason those routes are so expensive is that UK rail is in many regions frequently at or over capacity. Supply/demand does its thing until prices hit the caps. This is especially true around London. Price controls always cause shortages and in this case it's a shortage of seats and investment in capacity upgrades. Seems people prefer that to more expensive tickets or higher taxpayer subsidies.

Also the infrastructure is ancient - the steam locomotive was literally invented in the UK - and investment was largely abandoned during the decades of government ownership. The current railways often have infrastructure in them built a century ago.

Finally, some lines actually pay the government money rather than receive subsidies.

I don't think the UK position is wrong. It just means people who choose to use the railways instead of driving or moving pay more of the costs. Seems fair.

It's important to realise that the yearly price rises are almost all a result of subsidy dropping, and as peoplewindow says, many fares are already set by the government. Notably, the total premiums paid by the train operating companies (TOCs) now exceeds the amount of total subsidy, so for the first time since nationalisation, the railways are making an operational profit.

From memory, something like 4% of fare revenue ends up as profit going to the TOCs at the end of the year; for many, this isn't enough to buy a single extra train, yet alone anything bigger. The profits these private companies are taking aren't huge in terms of the costs of operating a railway!

That said...

> I don't think the UK position is wrong. It just means people who choose to use the railways instead of driving or moving pay more of the costs. Seems fair.

Surely that same argument should apply to driving? i.e., those using for the roads should pay more of the costs instead of it all coming out of general taxation?

They do. Fuel taxes pay for the costs of road maintenance and then a lot more on top (typically, rail subsidies!)

http://www.roadusers.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/8.4-2...

The interesting thing in the UK is despite those high costs the network is running at capacity, people seem willing to pay the fares.

Given that is the case I think it's hard to justify extra subsidy for people who are clearly getting enough utility from the system.

Germany has 200km/h and up roads in some places, so this is hardly a convincing counterargument to simply improving the interstate system.

You're allowed to go as fast as you safely can on some of our roads, but even on those the flow of traffic is maybe at 130-140 km/h (80-90 mph). Sustaining 200km/h in a car is very hard (extreme focus is required) and quite expensive as fuel economy drops sharply. Plus most cars can't actually do it.

slower than flying on a commuter airline

Less security, bigger seats, room to move around. The time loss going from New York to Chicago or Seattle to Los Angeles would be minimal if you count the total time spent in transit, and the trip would be much less stressful.

you still have to figure out how to travel tens of miles to where you really want to go.

Same with air travel, except it's easier for trains to end up in city centers instead of airports outside of the city.

as opposed to a continuous stream of people on a freeway

Which is much more environmentally damaging, and requires drivers. When autonomous, electric vehicles are the rule instead of the exception this might not be the case, but for now I'd much rather take a train than drive.

>>you still have to figure out how to travel tens of miles to where you really want to go. >Same with air travel, except it's easier for trains to end up in city centers instead of airports outside of the city.

With developed network of local and regional lines it's usually more convenient to travel by train, because you just switch to metro or local train on the same station. E.g. in Germany there are long distance speed trains (ICE), regionals (RE), local trains (S-Bahn), metro (U-Bahn) and very good public transit. I haven't find a place yet, where you will really need a car to get there.

One comment on the website mentions airport-like security checks, saying that they'll slow down the boarding by the same amount of time. Actually, it's not true - just look at "Sapsan" trains between Moscow and St.Petersburg in Russia. There's, in fact, airport-like security check right before the train and it does not make boarding significantly slower.

Airports are located pretty far from city centers. It's not uncommon to have to add at least an hour on both ends to handle transportation to/from airports, and that transportation can often be expensive in its own right if a cab is the best option.

When I go from NYC to DC and back, I don't fly, I take the train or bus. It ends up being significantly cheaper and doesn't take any longer, plus there's less annoying switching between modes of transit. Cities less than 400 km apart are already better traveled between using bus or low-speed rail -- now more than double that minimum radius for true high-speed rail and you can see how it would have a big impact on US long-distance travel.

5 years ago I tool the train from Edinburgh to London. That is not a fast train. 400 miles in 4.5 hours. But was kinda like being on a BART train without the crazy people. The trip is longer than flying (not by much) but the stress load is a lot less than flying.

Someone mentioned longer distances in the US. But far as I get most places building rail through the flat nowhere lands is really cheap. And the trains can run at max speed with few stops.

If you built a line from Chicago to Denver, okay 900 miles. But at 220 MPH, four hours. Be better than flying.

Totally agreed that I'm willing to spend a little bit longer on a train over a plane. It is a more enjoyable and relaxed travel experience.

Well, here's an example. The route between Moscow and St. Petersburg (about 400 miles, about the same as LA to SF) is a very popular train route. Flying between these cities makes no sense because a high speed train between them takes 4 hours and you board and get off right in the middle of each city. If you were flying you'd need to get to the airport, pass through security, fly, collect baggage, get to the destination city. So train ends up being faster, cheaper and much much more comfortable.

>It's slower than flying on a commuter airline, but the tickets cost nearly as much

That is a good indication there is demand. Prices can only go down if trains are more frequent and available to all places.

The northeast corridor is faster than flying. The trains stop in the downtown of each city which cuts out the travel time to and from the airport, and you don't have to arrive at the train station as early before boarding.

The ticket prices are high because Amtrak is subsidizing the non-profitable routes with the North East Corridor. If it was run as a business they would cut all the trains in the middle of the country and re-invest the profit in the NEC, or lower fares. If it was run as a public good, then there would be more of a subsidy. Right now Amtrak in this place where it's restricted by being beholden to politics but not enjoying the benefit of full throated government support.

> It's slower than flying on a commuter airline

When the flight says it's 40 minutes - it's not really 40 minutes, add time for tsa, baggage, landing etc and you get at least 2-3 hours wasted of your day

It doesn't include TSA or boarding, but it does include landing/taxiing. Flight time = gate to gate.

> It's slower than flying on a commuter airline, but the tickets cost nearly as much, and it's also enormously expensive to build

High-speed rail in many non-US countries is vastly cheaper to construct and much faster and reliable than USian high-speed rail.

> You're limited to putting people in a few train cars, as opposed to a continuous stream of people on a freeway.

With off-the-shelf railcars and a well-tested train control system rail can get far higher throughput than freeways. If you do the USian thing and have to get extremely customised/bespoke rolling stock and try to make your own bespoke train control system, well, you indeed do get the disaster you're describing.

> My perception is that it's a huge money pit for something that's quite frankly inferior to our current infrastructure. We would be much better off improving our current insterstate system.

US rail indeed sucks and it needs to be unfucked before more money is dumped into it. None of the suckiness (slowness, high construction cost per mile, high ticket prices) is inherent to high-speed rail, though.

Have you ever actually traveled on high speed rail?

Hey, your opinion is quite popular, and wrong.

How do people figure out how to get from airports to their final destinations?

How many people can put put in trains? China is going to get 32,000 people per hour in their low-speed maglev:

http://gbtimes.com/china/beijing-launch-first-maglev-line-20...

The throughput is higher in rail than cars. Also, you are trying to make HSR fit as a solution where cars would be better. No one said that trains are best in every situation. And absolutely no one said that we should remove all of our high-ways and replace them with rail.

However, between cities over several hundred thousand people, and within 500-7600 miles, they work out well.

Have you used it? Your experience doesn't match mine in using HSR in Europe, China and Japan.

The vehicle speed is lower but the total travel time (much less inconvenience) of rail vs air is much lower, except for transcontinental trips. And the rail stations are usually more conveniently located compared to airports.

And in larger Chinese cities, every HSL station is connected directly to the city subway system (or has the subway station under construction). That also means you don't have to allow extra time for contingencies, which usually means arriving early at the airport.

> * the tickets cost nearly as much*

Given that we don't have a high speed rail system in place, I'm not sure where this number is coming from.

> You're limited to putting people in a few train cars, as opposed to a continuous stream of people on a freeway.

My wife, my kid and I flew down to Texas, and are going to be spending about 20 hours doing long-distance drives.

I would absolutely love to be in a few high-speed train cars than stuck in a car, in a continuous stream of people, where one of us has to remain at relatively high alert for hours at a time, while the other one is strapped into a seat, trying to entertain the other other one who is strapped into a smaller seat, but has boundless energy and no concept of patience.

If we had some sort of road-train system where we weren't welded to a gas pedal and a steering wheel, then maybe.

i think we can all agree that the main issue (in america) is population density (lack thereof, could the system ever pay for itself?) and the american suburban lifestyle not being compatible with high speed rail

Your opinion is not unpopular; it's the default and prevailing opinion in the US or any economy with access to cheap energy and without any efficiency incentives (read: scarcity or foresight).

Flying is the most energy- and carbon-intensive mode per passenger-mile. Which as alluded above, is not a meaningful economic factor, yet. (Unfortunately by the time it becomes meaningful enough to be profitable, it might be too late to transition to anything else because the capital won't be there.)

RE highway vs. train - If you can imagine a continuous stream of cars on a highway, why wouldn't you be able to also imagine a continuous stream of trains on a track? A mile of track filled with train cars can hold more people than a mile of highway, easily. And it has one centralized power plant with a much higher efficiency factor (because it's a larger engine and because it uses better fuel for the purpose). It also has far less total wind resistance, since the train has only one front face and one rear face. And if it's high-speed rail, well, it moves faster than cars. But again, efficiency is not currently a meaningful factor.

Traveling the last few miles from the train stop is very much a solved problem. Even if you drive, that beats making the whole journey by car in my book. But those wishing to minimize it can always move closer in near the stop... thereby concentrating land-use in cities again and maybe letting the scourge of suburbia die off like it needs to... in a paroxysm of mold-infested particle-board.

I went to Japan for the first time recently, and holy crap, high speed rail is amazing. It's like flying business class, or better. You have so much leg room, free wifi and a powerpoint next to you. You don't have to check your bags in or go through security or any of that crap, you just turn up at the station 5 minutes before it leaves and then sit down in genuine comfort and hack away on your laptop for a couple of hours.

If it were an option in my country I'd definitely take it for any trip up to ~1,200km.

Flying sucks. Hard or impossible to sleep, uncomfortable, can't walk around, little to no food, airport security.

I envy mainland Europe with its rail system. I wish my region of Canada would build a rail system. What we have is old and mainly was for transporting ore, steel, grain. Even just regular rail not even high speed any speed is preferable in a snowstorm.

My region is small and would be perfect for a light rail system mainly because it's got few people scattered over a wide area with no direct route.

Bombardier even makes rail cars for many countries so it's a home-grown resource we could use.

I think south eastern Canada and north eastern US could have a great interconnected rail system. I'm only 800 km (~500 miles) from Boston but I may as well be on the dark side of the moon.

Like NY city before its subway system people were crowded in the city but when rail was expanded people could live in the suburbs and work in the city. I think a US and Canadian rail system would open up travel and trade on the eastern coasts of each country. Day trips to cities you'd never even think of visiting now or not even capable doing so now in a day.

The Anglosphere is just becoming a big joke altogether.

Rail is not cheap. It's feasible when we have population density. It would make sense along the DC-Boston megalopolis and perhaps SF-San Diego, maybe some stretch of Texas. It makes little sense in the rest of the country.

That said, where it would make sense, like DC-Boston, we definitely should build it out. Build up the cities as the countryside is absorbed (as seen in Japan, and elsewhere in Asia) and let it become viable. Its deployment would definitely affect how cities and other communities grow and also depopulate, so we'd need to anticipate that and prepare for it.

Three things China has going for is vis a vis the US:

-Pop density

-Command economy (gov't can just move things through with little debate, displace 1MM people, if necessary.)

-Costs (in labor, materials, regulation, etc.)

The SF to San Diego or D.C.-Boston corridors alone generate enough economic output to power most countries. It's mind-boggling people append "just" when talking about them like they afterthoughts in the grand scheme of things.

It's deployment would definitely affect how cities and other communities grow and also depopulate, so we'd need to anticipate that and prepare for it.

According to rail advocates, it's a good idea to hardwire your city's transportation infrastructure to fixed locations and routes that may or may not serve the population effectively and economically for decades to come.

But only if you're building rail. Roads are right out.

Here in Silicon Valley there's a lot of building going on near Caltrain stations. And we have no room to run another highway.

But the Valley isn't where the "generational failure" referred to in the article is taking place.

Your reply didn't look like it was restricted to discussing only inter-city travel.

That's already a busy rail corridor. But guess what? It's falling apart.

Millions of people pass through the NYC rail terminals every year, and the big inter-city one is crippled by infrastructure failures and damaged tunnels that connect to NJ. It seems that the NJ government spent Federal $$ provided to fix it on something else.

We're living in an age of incompetence.

Well yes, if you build infrastructure and then fail to increase maintenance funding as it ages and usage increases, it's going to get crippled.

Acela is not really high-speed rail. They should build out bona-fide high-speed rail ala Shinkansen. New track, new rolling stock, new propulsion systems, and affordable fares. NYC-Boston should be half of what it is now and they should eliminate all the "classes". It should be simply utilitarian transport.

Corruption is probably a thing too

"We're living in an age of incompetence."

I'm not American, but I doubt it very much. It seems to me, from the outside, so take it with a grain of salt, that the crippled infrastructure thing is politically motivated and working as planned.

What I don't understand -- how is road cheaper? I don't get it -- in Austin TX they are spending years to add a single lane to one of the main highways, along with high walls of thick concrete on either side to help with noise in neighborhood, etc. For all the talk of railway's cost and requiring disrupting existing buildings, we have paved roads criss-crossing all of our residential and commercial districts already. It certainly feels like the same way the government is promoting cars, spread out cities, and suburbia, they could be promoting more densely populated, rail-backed cities.

Road is more expensive but a lot more people want to use roads then want to use railroads so it doesn't matter what the price is.

It doesn't matter if something is cheaper or more efficient if people don't want to use it.

This is like asking why doesn't everyone use Linux?

It's not all about what people want either. Even with a rail system, you still need all the roads. Maybe not as many lanes, but American cities are pretty spread out. You will need a ton of last mile transportation.

> in Austin TX they are spending years to add a single lane to one of the main highways

We gotcha beat in Seattle, where it took 30 years to build the north I5-I405 interchange. It took only 20 years to build the 8th Street I405 overpass. 25 years are projected for the light rail.

The freeways were built in a time when you could realistically eminent-domain and bulldoze your way across the country. We no longer live in that time. Any project involving new rights of way is infeasible because property rights (especially property rights over land you don't own, but sits adjacent to your home) are so much stronger now.

Government is promoting cars, spread-out cities, and suburbia because they work so well and people love them so much.

Think about how much housing supply would go away if not for the road network.

Think about the bare-minimum transportation appliance car. With a private, enclosed space, air conditioning, a comfortable seat, and a radio, it's worlds better as a subjective experience than being inside even a relatively luxurious urban train during the commute rush. Now consider how many tens of thousands of dollars people happily spend on a level of comfort and quality far beyond the bare-minimum Craigslist special.

Democratic governments promote and invest in what their citizens like.

> Rail is not cheap. It's feasible when we have population density. It would make sense along the DC-Boston megalopolis and perhaps SF-San Diego, maybe some stretch of Texas. It makes little sense in the rest of the country.

As part of its HSR strategic plan, back in '09 the Obama admin identified over half a dozen regions well within HSR densities and distances (the existing north-east corridor, nothern new england linking to canada, southeast along the coast, the chicago area, the gulf coast, south-east central though Texas, the californian coast and the pacific northwest).

Trains less than 300mph are useless in the US.

Either go big (maglev/hyperloop) and meaningfully compete with airlines or forget about it.

I'd be ok with investing in 200mph rail if we went ahead and bought enough ROW to add faster adjacent rail when the funds/will is there.

> Trains less than 300mph are useless in the US.

That's complete nonsense. HSR is comfortably competitive with plane up to ~750 miles and can probably be stretched to ~900mi. That gives you a lot of interesting regions in the US.

No, high-speed train is not useful for linking NYC and LA, but nobody ever suggested that.

What does Spain have going for it? They have more HSR than the US (2000 miles).

No one said we should blanket the country with HSR, but shouldn't the US have a need for at least 2000 miles? We have basically zero.

You're doing that thing where you try to explain why it won't work in the US by saying that it won't work everywhere.

So it makes sense for "only" a third of the population, yeah, better to not talk about it.

I wouldn't call a command economy anything like an advantage.

EDIT: Also, lower labor costs are, to some degree, a function of having a command economy (China missed out on a ton of economic growth in the 50s, 60s, and 70s, that would have had it be much wealthier now, for example, and this command economy of theirs can command lower wages too, in part through financial repression, for example).

I wonder if the USA will ever build and modernize its infrastructure? We're still coasting on what was built 50, 60, 70+ years ago.

Then you travel to the rest of the developed world, and wow, what a difference in infrastructure.

The US picked cargo over people for rail. The US has an amazing logistics system comprising of truck, rail, barge, and air. Some people are working on adding drones.

Not having passenger rail was a choice. Automated cars and the potential of Hyperloop might seriously change people's opinion of passenger rail.

FWIW, automated cars make passenger rail less appealing.

Yes, passenger rail and freight rail don't mix very well. Passenger trains are generally slower and more expensive than airplanes, except maybe through high population density areas.

Scheduling is also problematic, particularly when you have a lot of local restrictions from cities and market changes that require freight rail to increase or just plain harvest.

Having just spent a couple weeks driving around Germany and Austria: it's hard, if you haven't done it before, to appreciate just how strong America's road system is until you drive in Europe.

German highways are excellent, of course; marginally better than our own (the worst traffic jam I've ever been in was 30 minutes outside of Munich, but, whatever). But the European highway network is sparser than the American network, and once you're off the highway, it's significantly worse (though more scenic, and much more "fun" to drive on.)

"though more scenic, and much more "fun" to drive on."

How is it worse, though? I have always been very happy with the continent's motorways but that's always been in the context of going on holidays.

I also found German highways to be _profoundly_ superior to those in the US. They: 1) Are far, far better paved 2) Are populated with people who know how to signal, and tha the left lane is for passing 3) Are not shoved through the middle of towns, and instead go around them so as not to destroy them, as towns in the US have been destroyed.

Virtually all roads between towns in the US, even in rural areas, are divided 2 lane roads. Even in Germany and Austria, which have the best roads in Europe, that's not even routinely true. We stayed for a week just outside of Amstetten, Austria, and I drove into Styria and around lower Austria, and even on long-distance runs, I found myself routinely on roads marked 100km/h that couldn't safely accommodate two cars.

Of your 3 arguments in favor of German highways --- which, again, I agree are better than those of the US --- 2 have nothing intrinsically to do with the roads. The one point you do make about German roads is that they're better maintained. Well, that's probably true on the average --- but that's because the US has far more highways than Germany does; the US highway network is denser. If you confined your analysis to the N best-maintained US highways, that might not remain true anymore.

> I found myself routinely on roads marked 100km/h that couldn't safely accommodate two cars.

It's worthwhile pointing out that it's fairly normal outside of built up areas in Europe to just have a standard speed limit (often 100 km/h) apply regardless of road conditions: it's simply down to the driver to drive to the conditions. There's plenty of roads around here where you'll struggle to do 30km/h safely, but legally it's 100km/h limit; my experience in various parts of the US would suggest they'd probably have a 30km/h or lower limit there.

I'm surprised you found so many roads that couldn't safely accommodate two cars on any significant route, though!

Keep dreaming and buying into whatever fantasy rich people keep selling. Hyperloop isn't even a thing and neither are driverless cars. Even if we get fully automated cars the roads will stay congested.

I get the feeling driver-less cars are going to be a thing given all the money. I do wish we could have some standards for "annotating" the roads with useful beacons to help things along, but the money is probably going to talk. If driver-less cars appear, I do expect roads to flow a bit better just because of proper grouping and better coordinated exit / entrances.

Yes, the Hyperloop is pretty iffy, but at least it won't conflict with freight rail.

Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.

Driverless cars have the same appeal as private commuter shuttles which is you get back the time you are stuck in traffic

We'd have to stop spending so much on the military, and instead spend it on that infrastructure. That would require massive political changes and leadership. Definitely possible but unlikely with our current cast of players.

Well, the fact that te government subsidized the automotive and oil industries with the Federal highway act in '56 lead to our deprioritization of rail. Had this not been the case, chances are we'd have European equivalent rail, and the small local trolley systems that dotted americas small and medium sized cities would never have been torn up.

No no, it's not billions spent on cars and suburbia, it's the size of the country!

The size of the country certainly factors in, no doubt. I'm with you there. I am saying, that had there not been HUGE subsidies for the auto/oil/construction industries in the form of interstate building that we would most likely have a better rails system. That's a fair thing to suppose no?

Haha. You should try driving from Moscow to Vladivostok.

Most of that drive is actually ok - there are about 500km of unpaved road en route, and only three or so river fordings.

Managed it in a 1988 Merc 190E in eight days, so if that can do it, anything can.

The US has a strong inter-city travel network in the airlines.

The TSA severely limits its effectiveness, so it could be tempting to build a rail network just to bypass the TSA, but there's no reason to think the same screening procedures won't apply to HSR after the first incident (or just threat).

This reminds me of the popularity boost various nosql databases got because it allowed devs to sidestep bureaucracy that had built up around schema changes.

That's the first useful justification I have ever seen for NoSQL.

How in the world did I miss such an obvious thing?

There is: you can't easily turn a train into a weapon able to take down any large piece of infrastructure in sight. In fact since all high speed trains are electric, you probably can't get very far before the inevitable power cut.

What does the TSA have to do with me sitting on the tarmac for an hour at even secondary city airports waiting for departure?

Congestion is just what happens when too many people want to use a system and you're not willing to deny travel to some of them.

Congestion absolutely happens on trains. Just look at the New York or San Francisco subways during rush hour. The first and most obvious form is that you'll spend the first few train departures in "line" to get to the edge of the platform, then a couple more for a train you can physically squeeze onto.

The more insidious one is that public transit operators respond to crowding by increasing frequency beyond what their signaling technology can support. Even after you make it onto the train, you'll spend most of the journey stopped on the track waiting for the train in front of you to move.

You can solve congestion in any transportation system by enforcing a low enough number of simultaneous users, forcing the others to not travel, or use some other means. We seem least willing to do this with trains. Transit authorities are seriously thinking about congestion pricing for freeways, airlines raise prices at popular times, but rail systems are working to attract more ridership even as they collapse under the weight of their already-far-too-high ridership.

Every time I hear or read something about the US I realize the country is in many ways far behind Europe. When it comes to healthcare (in terms of accessibility), education (in terms of cost), infrastructure, etc, America seems to be doing much worse than these countries. Yet, ironically, America still leads these countries (and the rest of the world) in most other spheres.

Keep in mind that in US all these services that us Europeans think are for the benefit for the society such as health care of education are actually just for the benefit of the private companies who rake in the money while the society foots the bill of these bad policies. But that's what you get when you have a goverment which is for the businesses instead of for the people.

But didn't you hear, salaries for programmers and bankers are much higher than in Europe. And GDP per capita!! That's all that matters of course /s

They believe in individualism much more, small government, less solidarity. Which is great for the rich and really bad for the poor.

The best of the best in any subject are likely to be on the rich side of the divide, and they flock to the US.

We have a serious problem with retrogradism in this country.

A large number of people are suffering from changes outside of their control, and they are disconnected from those at the forefront of social and technological progress. Many of these people have lost trust in the system, and even in progress itself (outside of progressions that are accessible and affordable such as games or phones). As a result, there is little enthusiasm for investing in major improvements to systems or building any major infrastructure enabling progress.

"High speed rail? What is in it for me? I work part time and can't afford these medications. I want the life I used to have back."

Perhaps a good place to start is understanding the experience of people who are voting for an imagined retrograde society. This can be difficult for those of us who have had the privilege of a better education, or better opportunities in the cities, or even all of our needs met as we build what we build. The privileged must try, and must succeed in understanding what is happening here. This is because the votes of those within what is essentially a ghetto lead to major consequences, including underfunding high speed rail. The result isn't just ridiculously under-qualified and intellectually isolated politicians that are easy to make fun of.

The underprivileged will keep voting in this way until their concerns are answered (or not).

We at the technological forefront know more about what needs to be done in terms of advancing progress, possibly even to the point of solving half of all social problems. However, we must also pay heed to the immediate, harsh reality of the people left behind. Our environment -- natural, political, or infrastructural -- depends on this.

If the ethical demand to listen and react appropriately to the suffering of others does not convince us to strongly act, watching the destructive results of their votes should.

I would not have much interest in greater understanding between me and someone who calls my desires "retrograde".

That is assuming the term retrograde is a bad thing; often it is not. I might have chosen a better word, and am curious if there is one.

This retrograde notion is based on a lot of evidence and personal experiences. For example, in a conversation I had with someone a few years ago I asked what is wrong with the way things are. That person told me he wants things to be like the way they were in the 1950s, referring to the sense of community, job opportunities, and social mores.

Sounds to me like those people miss Jim Crow and the advantages of a society built on the persecution and hate of others. Retrograde with all its negative connotations doesn't even begin to be negative enough for the situation you're describing. Yes, you could have chosen a better word but you're looking in the wrong direction.

May be the US is doing a wiser thing. I live in Spain, where high speed train was pushed in the era of the housing bubble, and in my opinion is not that big deal, except for communicating the two bigger cities of Spain (Madrid and Barcelona). Lower capacity routes are on deficit, and I'm very skeptical about their long term viability.

There is another question here. How the hell did the French build 300km of high speed track, going through central Paris, for only 10 billion dollars? If Australia could do that, the cost benefit analysis on Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane would look very different.

Melbourne to Sydney is worth doing now, though it's a close thing. But the benefits come as time savings for rich businessmen, and Australia told them that if they really wanted it they could pay for it themselves.

They really need to build high speed rail across the east coast of Australia. We've talked about it in this country for so long and yet nothing is happening.

The problem is that it will cost 100 billion dollars (!), and it really isn't clear that it's worth that much. That's where the French seem to have some magical advantage.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brightline appears to be for real in Florida and the Acela now carries a majority of traffic on some parts of the Boston-NY corridor and service to Washington. Texas has much cheaper gas and stronger car culture than anywhere in Europe or Canada. It's really just California that's lagging behind expectations; the other two projects could be better. And Florida / Texas / California / Northeast wraps up all of the locations in the US that are viable for high-speed intercity passenger rail. The only truly underserved corridor in North America is Toronto - Detroit/Windsor - Chicago, but most people don't even recognize it as a possibility because it crosses a border.

So instead of "what's wrong with the US" we should ask "what went wrong with CA HSR?".

You can't even compare the population density of France with Germany, hence why always apply the "high speed rail" idea to the US? Image a high speed rail system between large cities but people still have to own and use a car, drive 200miles to/from the next station. Also either the train stops at every small town or it will be an express train that leaves the rural areas behind.

IMHO a high speed railway network is not the start but an evolution of an existing regional rail system/public transportation system that acts as a feeder and communter infrastructure.

The US lacks those public transpotation systems even in mid-size towns. That's a bigger problem IMHO.

Something that is never debated when we talk about high speed train in the us: would it bring development the same way the iron horse brought development in the 19th century?

I mean, yes the US is sparsely populated (in the middle), but isn't it also because it doesn't have fast and easy transport system?

Wouldn't a high speed line between San Fran and Portland develop the very rural regions of Northern California?

High speed train also means high speed cargo transport, isn't that driving some economical development?

These are not rhetorical questions, i seriously have no idea of the answers, but it would be nice to see what experts think about that.

Even third world countries such as Morocco are building rail tracks for bullet trains...

A big difference between europe and us is also in the fact that people in europe tend to live inside the cities, and not just go there to work. Train is considered faster than plane her in france, because you can go to the trainstation using subway, and board immediately, whereas you need to leave your place 2 hours before your flight.

i have the feeling that this advantage would be lost in the us, where people live in suburbs way more, and so any trip starts at least with a 45 minutes drive ( not to mention the fact that parking in an airport is probably more convenient than in a city center).

62.7% of the US population lives in only 3.5% of the land mass. We're not as concentrated in cities as Europe, but we're not all small towners by far. And we're seeing a mass migration to city centers across the country, while rural areas are seeing a depopulation.

'Why Trains Suck in America' : https://youtu.be/mbEfzuCLoAQ

In the U.S., President Obama’s initiative was met by Republican governors elected in 2010 who, for reasons that had little to do with sanity, resisted free federal money to fund the completion of intercity rail projects their (Democratic) predecessors had developed

It's not insane. Federal money is never "free" it's taken from the people and always comes with strings attached.

Like it or, this guy speaks the truth

In addition, if the rail project might potentially have a negative operating profit, then it may be rational to refuse it.

When other countries play a bigger role in securing the global economy with military might, maybe we can start building a high speed rail infrastructure. Otherwise, I don't see an actual need for it. It would be an improvement, for sure, but all I see is people looking at much smaller countries and assuming that America is stupid for not doing everything they do.

I still resent Rick Scott's decision to reject federal funds for Florida's high speed rail. It would have been the first high speed rail in the country.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_High_Speed_Corridor

I think it's too late for rail. Yes, we lost a generation of development in rail. We also lost a generation of development for pretty much every other transportation industry, and thus our whole infrastructure. The article briefly touches on it. Transportation in general hasn't been a priority for at least thirty years. I'm not worried about rail. Rail is dead in the US and has been for a long time. I'm worried about our highways. That's our infrastructure core, without which the US cannot survive. Not building rail projects in the US is pretty normal and on par for the downward trajectory we're on.

Not building and maintaining highways and bridges shouldn't even be an option. While some upper-class, rich people can afford to live in our cities, they are a huge minority and most people rely on cars and highways. Outside of a couple of cities, good city public transportation simply doesn't exist in the US and won't exist anytime soon.

I think we need to be realistic as to what is possible in the US. High speed inter-city rail isn't possible. And even if it is, can it compete with the price of plane tickets? Doubtful. Giving our cities good public transportation isn't possible. It may have been possible in the past, but not the last few decades. Having room inside a city for all who want to live there most certainly isn't possible. Building roads and bridges has now become almost impossible in many places. I have to wonder what is the plan for the US transportation infrastructure. As far as I can see, the plan is to let it deteriorate until it doesn't exist anymore. At least in that sense, it's consistent with education, social programs, and the rest of our crumbling society.

It's possible. We just don't wanna.

From the little data I gathered, trains/mass transit seems to be much more efficient than cars regarding greenhouse emissions. YMMV depending on your stance on climate change, but I find it sad people dismissing rails so easily in this thread.

Interestingly a private company is tying to build a high speed train from Dallas to Houston tx. The great thing is that it would be privately owned so if it's a flop taxpayers arent on the hook.

so because every other country is subsidizing the shit out of stuff so should we? Economics drives our country not pipe dreams of people who want to get the taxpayers to foot the bill for their new hotness

Rail is a bad idea wrapped in shiny engineering. Read Randal O’Toole http://ti.org/antiplanner/.

IMO electric and self-driving car technology is advancing rapidly enough that investment in high-speed rail is going to end up like landline telephones -- it had a time when it was useful, but countries that missed the boat will end up doing A-OK without them.

Rail is convenient, but it will never ever be as convenient as having a car take you where you want to be, carry your kids, and carry your stuff around. As soon as self-driving technology eliminates the hassles of parking and clean solar-electric tech eliminates the environmental concerns, ridership is going to tank on all the fixed train lines. It might be 10-15 years out, but I would be shocked if any of the investments made today in rail ever pay off.

Here they are not referring to intra-city transport. Self driving people movers make sense within a city.

Inter-city transportation is a different problem. I think high-speed rail makes a lot of sense. It's energy efficient and land efficient and probably time efficient as well.

A self-driving car with 1-2 passengers takes up significantly more space than existing public transportation technologies, such as trains and buses. This isn't a problem outside of densely populated places. However, as the density of a place increases, point-to-point transportation become increasingly ineffective.

Replacing public transportation with point-to-point self-driving technology in a place like Manhattan, would require building out a ridiculously massive amount of road capacity.

You're thinking like an engineer, where efficieny trumps all.

In the real world people who can will spend money not to be packed in like sardines with people of questionable hygiene.

Know what happens when the AC is out on your vehicle? You get it fixed.

How about when the AC is out for the 3rd time this month on the bus/train?

"Oh well, that sucks, guess I'm going into work sweaty today"

Mass transit everywhere I've been in the US sucks. It's so bad only the poor us it, because even the middle-middle class finds it disgusting/inconvenient.

How much more are you willing to pay, in time and money, for your convenience? (e.g. Waiting in traffic, Congestion pricing, and Elon Musk's Boring Company)

In Hawaii, the city bus system isn't disgusting. Someone I know told me so. But yeah everywhere else in US, public transportation is disgusting and inconvenient.

I disagree. Trains on high speed rail networks can travel between 150 and 200 miles per hour. It's highly unlikely that we will see self-driving cars hitting those speeds routinely for a long time as it requires every other car on the highway to be self-driving as well and for cars to be in constant communication with each other. Both systems should exist and they should compliment each other.

In Europe there is a huge tendency to switch from cars to public transportation. Parking space in the city has become really expensive. New roads are built narrower and narrower in favor of walk-ways and bike lanes and to slow the driving speed down. In Austria there is a decline of about 1% of car owners each year.

The US has enough space for gigantic parking lots and wide roads. They don't have the same problems as in Europe. That's a huge difference that you are missing there.

Own your server is convenient in some ways. What if building HSR is like building an IaaS?

Even if we had high-speed rail the gov would regulate it to death like everything else - they'll make it just as painful as flying. Imagine the TSA salivating for the mission creep.

Several comments in this thread almost appear to be constructed to prove the author right in how the debate derails. It's not much of my concern, but still I couldn't help to notice something that felt like an unusual occurrence here on HN, or maybe I'm simply seeing ghosts. I am rather tired to be honest!

Anyway, my flawed observation:

Some sort of deadlock where instead of discussing how to improve the situation, the discourse get stuck in debating which is the correct reason for not doing anything, instead of trying to come up with improvements?

Several times arguments are made that a non existent technology will make current investment pointless in the future, so no investment should be made now. Isn't that the argument implied by the title of the article?

Obviously, it could be true that future inventions would make it pointless, but that certainly is not something you can calculate/know off the cuff, if it's even worth speculating about. Building a high speed rail network take long enough time that all those possible avenues can probably be explored in excruciating detail before the first shovel hits the dirt a decade from now if everything moves quickly.

People are sceptical towards hyperloop, which is understandable in many ways. But what if it would work? Wouldn't it be worth investing quite a lot of money simply to figure out if it could work?

Obviously it could potentially only solve a very specific part of the transportation puzzle, but one that could have quite some positive effects.

Positioning cars and aircraft as more-or-less the only viable ways of communication for the foreseeable future sounds like an awfully odd position to me, even for a very sparsely populated country. While, the correct solution might not be high-speed rail, some variation of it it could still be the best solution in several instances.

Maybe someone would come up with something like a tethered electrical ground effect aircraft/train which could take advantage of the sparse population if they knew there were money to be made. Instead of massive resistance and cartloads of red tape ?

A guess: Now that Trump is talking about "infrastructure", the passenger train people are coming out of the woodwork again looking for big subsidies from the US Federal Government.

Some years ago, for a while I was a prof in Ohio. Well, there was a group all hot on connecting all the Rust Belt cities -- Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton, Cincinnati, Muncie, Akron, Indianapolis, South Bend, Youngstown, Toledo, etc. with passenger trains. They were really hot.

Look, guys, the US had a very good passenger rail network. Could go by train from one tiny crossroads to any other, all by train. And people did that. But soon that whole thing was killed off by, and may I have have the envelope please? Right, the Model T, etc. Private cars. A lot of the tracks grew up with weeds.

After WWII, soon, for trips up to 1000 miles, say with the whole family, people would rather just take the family car. Just after WWII, the passenger trains were still running, but, no thanks, people would rather take the family car, e.g., from Florida all the way to Grandma's near Buffalo, NY. As soon as I got married, my wife and I went to her family farm for Christmas, 900 miles, by car, car packed with stuff. Plane? Train? Bus? No thanks.

Gee, guys, now with the TSA, no way will I want to take a car full of luggage, toys, Christmas presents, etc. past the TSA. No way.

For me, for anything like family travel, public mass transportation, no matter how fast, how roomy, how cheap, how safe, due to the TSA and all the luggage handling problems, lack of privacy, being legally under the thumb of a lot of people, rules, bureaucrats, various cases of police, being subject to being forced to wait in my seat for four hours while whatever is going on, etc., the answer is no, no way, never, don't bother to ask again.

There are a lot of people and projects there in the woodwork eager to come out with lots of publicity, reasons, and excuses and eager to scarf up Federal subsidies. A LOT of people/projects. Clearly there is a whole industry of this stuff. They are always back in the woodwork, and as soon as they smell money, and they are good at smelling money, out they come, big publicity drives, etc.

High speed rail doesn't actually provide the eco-benefits over planes that proponents think it will. And high speed rail is only competitive against planes and cars at distances less than 500mi. Unfortunately the US is too sparsely populated and the big cities outside of the coastal corridors are too spread out for high speed rail to be economically and ecologically sensible. http://www.newsweek.com/why-high-speed-trains-dont-make-sens...

What's the justification for spending on high speed rail vs roads vs air travel vs doing nothing (Google Car is coming, remember)?

Will the Google Car drive at 200 mph ?

No, but it will take you door to door, departing instantly when you're ready and not before, and it won't stop in between unless you want it to.

*citation needed

The congested road network still happens with Google cars.

Does it, even when cars movements are coordinated and all driving automated? How congested?

Regardless I would want to see a cost-justification of high speed rail vs auto vs standard train vs buses, etc.

And somehow magically the continuously overcrowded streets and traffic jams don't apply to the Googlr car? Have fun waiting in traffic..

How much money does Amtrak in the US Northeast Corridor make each year, in ballpark, round numbers? $100 million? $1 million? $1?

For americans a train is socialism. They need their V8s for crawling walking speed on the 4 lane highway burning a ton of fossil fuels. Actually the bigger the truck the better since it means freedom (or something). ;-)

I'd love to disagree but my experience tells me otherwise. Several of my mentors are opposed to rail for these exact reasons, although not as bluntly. Rolling coal is a real thing.

To quote a thread about that (cultural ideas around automobiles vs rail) I saw on twitter:

"Americans tend to think that there's no way everyone would use trains unless forced to by lack of alternatives. This is projection because their experience with cars is exactly that: forced to by lack of alternatives. Do you think nobody in Japan drives? The country that gave us Toyota, Nissan, Honda, Subaru, Mitsubishi, Suzuki, etc etc, isn't without a domestic market lmao" (https://twitter.com/380kmh/status/879463196284858369)

Go walk up to someone in LA or Seattle and ask them if they could would they take a train into work instead if it cut the time in traffic down. I'll bet very few people would say no.

Just like how majority of Americans want universal healthcare and want more gun control and less war too. But they don't get it. We should just admit we live in an oligarchy and go from there.

Trains in LA have done well (buses not so much). This is despite the trains being crowded and not quite as on-time as they ought to be.

405 and 10 are a living hell; plenty of folks inching along them would rather not be.

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/la-ca-cm-building-...

I'm pretty sure my American farmer friends do not think the trains that are filled by the grain elevator to deliver their produce to market are any form of socialism.

This doesn't make any sense. It's not like Americans don't undertake long-range travel; Americans routinely visit other American cities thousands of miles from their homes.

It's simply that Americans do that with commercial air, not with rail.

If there's something more "socialistic" than being crammed cheek-to-jowl with other people in the back of an airplane, I don't know what it is.

Are you perhaps confusing the debate about American high-speed rail with the debate about American commuter rail? There are probably cultural reasons why Americans don't use public transportation as much as Europeans, but that's got nothing to do with HSR, which connects large cities, not suburbs.

> If there's something more "socialistic" than being crammed cheek-to-jowl with other people in the back of an airplane, I don't know what it is.

Well, there's still the "people who can afford exorbitant prices can get much more legroom and service and be separated from those who can't" thing going on there

Business class seats are about as comfortable as European train seats, so I'm not sure what there is to learn from this.

First class is much more comfortable than coach class, though, which was my point

So have multiple classes in trains! Heck, look at what some of the high-speed trains in Italy have as their top product (https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8810/17082308250_62443948ff_z...). Admittedly only 10 per train, but still. And that's on top of three lower classes!

At least on the northeast regional line, Amtrak has multiple classes; the regular line has coach and business, and the Acela has business anad first (which I find to basically be the equivalent of Burger King offering medium, large, and "king" rather than small, medium, and large, but that's beside the point).

To be clear, though, I wasn't trying to give an opinion on whether I think taking the train or flying is better, just that I don't consider the experience of flying on an American airline to be "socialistic".

A train means being trapped. USA light rail has been run so poorly that no one thinks they can depend over the long term on rail. The trust in rail as a solution has been so greatly eroded, that people will always want to have a car as a backup. And since they own a car anyways (under this scenario) ...

A plane means not just being trapped, but also air-tightly locked, fastened to seat, and brought to a 30'000 feet altitude.

But no one is trying to convince me that a plane should be my only method of transportation, and that a car is not needed. Further, I don't use a plane to commute, at least not at my level of pay :)

I'm an American that strongly opposes HSR. My position is well thought out, and supported by relevant literature.

I don't match your insipid cultural stereotype at all.

National slurs aren't allowed here (not of any nation) and will get your account banned, so please don't do it again.

The first one went OK, the second collapsed the Japanese rail industry. All require huge subsidies.

America is smart!

This sounds like a title written by someone that's never visited anywhere but New York or LA. The USA is very large, and we don't have high population density except for the Eastern seaboard (where rail seems to work pretty well there).

Roads are a much better, cheaper, faster, flexible option. We just need a 10x revolution in: storage density, fast charging, or efficiency.

I’m going to share my experience with commuter (not high‐speed) rail: the New Mexico Rail Runner. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Trainroadrunner.jpg

The Rail Runner was built in 2006 primarily due to Governor Bill Richardson’s efforts. It essentially covers two cities, Albuquerque (~500,000 people) and Santa Fe (the capital, ~70,000 people), which are already connected by Interstate 25.

I love trains; I recently took Amtrak to LA and back. And I love the Rail Runner. It’s my favorite way to get to Santa Fe by far. Once I arrive, being without a car is not too bad: Santa Fe is a fairly walkable city, Albuquerque has a decent bus system, and a bicycle (which I can take on the train) makes things a lot easier.

The big problem with the Rail Runner is its cost.

Richardson originally was very vague about the cost, and initial estimates were (it turns out, a wildly optimistic) sub–$100 million in initial capital. The state took out a loan to pay for construction. The total cost is now estimated to be about $800 million. Currently the state Department of Transportation pays about $25 million a year on the loan; as currently structured, that will slowly increase to $35 million per year until 2025 and 2026, where the payments jump to $110 million (per year!).

New Mexico is currently in a budget crisis (not just due to the Rail Runner). (http://fortune.com/2016/12/04/new-medico-budget-crisis/) There have been special legislative sessions called this year to sort things out, and there’s conflict between all three branches of our state government. I have no idea where the DOT will find $80 million in their budget the next ten years, at least not without serious cuts to our already underfunded highways.

Then there are the operating costs. This is “not so bad.” Revenues only cover about 10% of operating expenses. But at least the rest is covered (at the moment) by county taxes, federal grants, and payments for use of the track by Amtrak and BNSF.

I’ll be cynical: my personal belief is that Richardson intentionally hid the costs and pushed the Rail Runner as a short‐term publicity stunt for his 2008 Presidential run, without a care as to what it would do to the state ten years later. It is very like him. (Don’t even get me started on the spaceport.) https://www.abqjournal.com/news/state/602848nm10-16-07.htm

The legislature sponsored a study to determine the feasibility of selling the Rail Runner (https://lintvkrqe.files.wordpress.com/2015/11/final-hm-127-s...). It concluded that nobody would be willing to buy it due to low revenues, high operating costs, and the plethora of exclusivity agreements that would need to be renegotiated (with BNSF, Amtrak, the pueblos, the federal Department of Transportation…). And selling it wouldn’t help since it wouldn’t absolve us of the requirement to pay off the debt. At this point I don’t foresee a solution other than refinancing the loan (again) to avoid those $100 million cliff payments, at the cost of further interest payments.

Like I said, I love the Rail Runner, and I really want to see it (or passenger rail of some sort) succeed in New Mexico. I do think the way the Rail Runner was handled — intentionally hiding the costs and having no concrete plan to cover operating costs — is completely unconscionable.

Not that it has to operate at a profit; after all, highways lose money too. But the Rail Runner loses so much money, and we’re already a poor state. It is valuable to connect New Mexico’s capital with its largest city. I just feel like there has to have been a better way to do it. I hope the proposed train from Las Cruces, NM to El Paso, TX (http://www.lcsun-news.com/story/news/local/2017/06/28/study-...) will learn from the mistakes made with the Rail Runner.

Whew. After all that, I’m curious: what successful rail projects have you seen, and what makes them successful?

Most rail systems do lose money, but this one sounds pretty bad planning.

The population of the cities being connected is extremely low, and prices are ridiculously cheap too (2 to 10 dollars?).

100 million was wildly optimistic, French-style light rail was really expensive too, about 600 million per mile - http://www.citymetric.com/transport/rer-or-rer-c-how-paris-t...

The cheapest I can find on Ferropedia for a similar project would be 600 million dollars, so 800 million isn't way over budget. And the fare is 20 euros (more than twice the most expensive fare for the Road Runner).

http://www.ferropedia.es/wiki/Costos_de_construcci%C3%B3n_de...

What about the logistics industry?

People keep on forgetting the immense size of the continental USA.

http://francistapon.com/images/travels/europe/usa/900/TEXAS....

This is a discussion about high-speed rail, not US geography.

Yeah OK you're super special and no one else has the same problems you do. The irony of that considering the title was not missed.

China isn't all that small either

They are just as large, but they have 4x the pop. That helps a lot in more ways than one.

If you adjust the numbers in the graph at the bottom of the article for head of pop in the countries, China's still overshadowing everyone else, but suddenly France, Spain, and Italy tower over the US, and the US is still a flat line at 0.

Who cares about chunks of the country nobody lives in?

A high speed rail line to cover the region from LA to the Bay Area or the Eastern Seabord wouldn't be any less a project than when Japan did it. If anything it would be easier since our land isn't all geologically unstable.

I mean, China is not small either. In terms of doable, there is still a higher density of wealth per square mile in the U.S., even if the population density is less. But at any rate, you don't need to have the entire country be one high speed rail system. You could connect the West Coast from San Diego to Seattle, including L.A., S.F. and Las Vegas. You could do the same for the East coast. And you could have a Houston, Dallas, Austin circuit, among others. No need to do S.F. to NYC for passenger transport.

The US built a transcontinental railroad in 1869. We built a comprehensive interstate highway system in 30 years.

That argument is bunk.

Why does that matter? Did the immense size of China prevent them from building high speed rail?

Ignoring that for a moment, high speed rail between major cities and population centers is where it would be most beneficial anyway.

The US should take leadership ideas from China? Uh, without trains, how would an average Chinese person travel 100 miles? Sure, something on wooden wheels. That is, notice that China is very short on private cars.

Last I heard, in Belgium or some such, sure, can buy a new car. But it will have to be imported, and the import tariff is 180% of the cost of the car. Now understand why the EU is so big on bicycles and trains?

Yes, the U.S. should start taking ideas from China.

And cars in Belgium aren't 180% of the price in the U.S. (not to mention they're part of the EU so they don't have to import German or French cars). The main difference is that cities are built on a human scale so cars don't fit and aren't a good way to go around, not to mention garages are almost nonexistant and parking is very expensive.

Interesting. Recently I read the 180% number. And that should apply to importing a US car. Yup, I didn't keep a reference.

And the reference neglected to mention that buying cars within the EU would have no import fee.

I can believe the 180% number related to importing an U.S. car, but why would anyone do that? :)

> The US should take leadership ideas from China?

Yes, why not? The USA should take good ideas from anywhere they come from, as should any other country.

> notice that China is very short on private cars.

China has 172 million private cars, is that "very short" on private cars?

The USA has 250 million private cars by comparison.

China will likely exceed the US private car ownership in a few short years, will they still be "very short" on private cars when that happens?

http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-ihs-automotiv...

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2016-01/25/c_135043964.htm

Interesting. Okay, but the more relevant number for mass transportation planning would be the number of cars per, say, 1000 people or 1000 working age people or some such. With that, the US has a lot "more" cars and China is "short" on cars.

People keep on forgetting the immense density of America across it's East Coast: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_megalopolis

The northeast corridor accounts for 60M(!) people in the United States and yet the rail options are expensive and slow. it still boggles my mind that flying from Boston to NYC was cheaper by flight than train.

While the US is geographically immense, the population is actually concentrated pretty well. Obviously rail doesn't work everywhere but if we had rails serving the Northeast Corridor, Texas (Austin, Dallas, Houston), California Coast (San Diego -> SF) we would have lines serving highly trafficked and dense areas.

That train's as expensive as it is because 54% of people doing rail-or-fly trips between Boston and NYC take the train. It's value pricing.

France has approximately the same population as the Northeast megalopolis (the Boston–Washington Corridor) but the French population is spread out over three times the area.

This "Texas-Europe Size Comparison" fails to include half of Europe.

...which means more room to put a few railroads in.

Currently in the UK there is talk of a high speed rail link from London to what Londoner's call 'the North'. Many, many houses will have to be demolished to put this line in. The cost of buying those properties - to demolish them - is fairly cost prohibitive, plus people like their homes so it is politically awkward.

Thus population density/country size cuts both ways.

Furthermore, sometimes it can be advantageous to have a longer journey by train than a shorter journey by plane. When I was working in Glasgow I would take the overnight sleeper train, to arrive for the start of the working day having 'slept' on the train. The alternative taxis and planes and hotel stay was a lot more tiring than the train, even with that stop at Crewe where they change the rolling stock around, waking everyone.

It's not just talk, Phase1 has approval and is starting construction now, and Phase2a (to Crewe) will get approval this year, assuming the wheels don't fall off the current govt.

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