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Comment by illvm | Hacker News Reader

There is also the environmental impact to consider. Air travel has a much larger emission profile compared to train travel, and train travel has a much larger capacity. Plus, rail station are often in the center of the city rather than on the outskirts like airports are. e.g. traveling by train from Boston to NYC vs flying is almost a wash time wise due to travel to/from the airport + buffer time for security.

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> There is also the environmental impact to consider. Air travel has a much larger emission profile compared to train travel

I'm not sure that's true.

Heavy locomotives require a lot of fuel, and aircraft turbine engines are fairly efficient these days (airplanes roughly get 1% more efficient per year, compounded annually.)

Railroads also divide the landscape, which has a highly negative impact on wild-life roaming and migration patterns.

It definitely is true, these are electrified lines and rolling resistance is low. For equivalent distances elsewhere emissions are 80-90% lower with rail over air transport. With the potential for solar in SoCal there is no reason this could not be even better.

Dividing the landscape is a separate issue. It can be mitigated against (tunnels, habitat bridges, route planning), but alone it's not an excuse to stick with emission heavy modes of transport.

Getting to the city center, though, is often problematic. You either follow the existing railroad lines, which often have tight curves, or you build your own, which involves ripping out a long path through the already-existing city.

if Japan can manage it America can

The more relevant comparison would be California specifically instead of all of America.

Still, given that if California were an independent country it'd be right behind Japan in terms of GDP, if Japan can manage high-speed rail, we should be able to.

The issue is a large chunk of tax revenue goes to the federal govt, not the state of calfornia.

That and their mismanagement of property tax and pubic pensions.

Or you tunnel. Expensive, but effective.

Exponentially expensive. Do I hear "seismically active terrain"?

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