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Comment by warmwaffles | Hacker News Reader

I wish this mode of transportation would be practical and affordable here in the US. I like the light rail in Denver, and the subways in San Francisco. Made getting around town really easy and affordable. Unfortunately with the distance between cities here it is more practical to take a flight.

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Depends on the cities. NY-SF by train will remain nonsense forever, but the eastern seaboard and a bunch of other clusters (LA-SF, Great Lakes stuff, I think the obama admin had a map of zones they wanted to put HSR proposals for a few years back) could be serviced by high-speed train, even more so with maglev (which extends the competitive range of train against plane)

My personal rule of thumb[0] is modern HSTs (280~320km/h top speed) are superior to plane up to ~1000km, and can remain competitive to 1500km.

(although, though that's much more of a personal advantage, having really shitty ears and great difficulty with pressure equalization the odd train tunnel — even at high speed — is much less painful than going from 0 to 30k ft and back)

[0] modulo specific settings, including the current security theater shit which I don't have to experience on train and considering that most of my experience is on european lines where city center to city center is what you want and airports are commonly 30~40mn away from city center

Amtrak Hiawatha is an excellent and well-used "traditional" passenger rail line. Milwaukee<->Chicago in 91 minutes. Almost never late or slow, zero gate security or even ticket checks, convenient Passbook-compatible e-tickets checked by the conductor, comfortable seats, sufficient legroom, 110VAC at every window, takes you to the middle of Chicago with direct or easy access (> 3 bus stops) to every major CTA line and the Metra Electric.

The only things I'd really change are the price ($48 round-trip is a bit steep as a college student) and the lack of wi-fi. The vast majority of commuting professionals have cellular modems though.

It's really great to be able to move between cities in reasonable time without owning a car, buying gas and insurance, or trying to find somewhere to park for less than the price of a firstborn son anywhere useful in Chicago.

I've pulled out my iPhone speedometer app on the train and it clocks at around 80 in the middle of nowhere, 65ish in the northern Chicago suburbs.

The UK is also an example of effective, well-used conventional rail (up to 125 mph) in a densely populated region. It went downhill a bit after privatisation, but it's mostly recovered, and usage is high and increasing. There's now a high speed north-south line planned, because the busiest major route is soon going to be running at capacity.

Spain has some security theater at their high speed trains but it is far less invasive than the one at airports. It is on the other hand even more useless since the security checks are not done at all stations. I have boarded AVE trains without passing a security check.

They had a high profile bombing at Madrid's Atocha train station (the day after one of my brothers was there, that one hit close to home, not that I expect security theater to make a difference).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Madrid_train_bombings

There are no security checks at the commuter trains (where the bombings happened) at Atocha or other stations (I traveled by commuter train from Atocha to Chamatrín a couple of months ago). The security checks are only for long distance trains at larger stations, so a terrorist can either just again bomb commuter trains or use the commuter train or bus to get to a small station and board the AVE there.

EDIT: Correction, I took the commuter train from Sol to Chamartín, so I do not actually know if there are security checks at the commuter trains at Atocha. But I assume not since it would not scale and there were no checks at the other stations.

The pressurization issue is no longer a problem - at least with the Japanese designs.

They run their tracks right next to each other, so trains are designed to not suffer major pressure changes from passing trains or tunnels.

Even with the fact that planes fly slower now than in the 60s, I'll gladly fly DEN-SFO. I can be finishing dinner in Palo Alto when you're in the Salt Flats.

Unless it's raining/snowing/windy in Denver or SF (or even an unrelated location like Chicago or Boston which might prevent your aircraft from getting to DEN in the first place) in which case you might be sleeping in an airport terminal while masklinn is finishing a late supper in Palo Alto.

I write this as someone who has had two cancellations and 6 delays over ten air trips in the past three months.

And what are the stats for delays in mag-lev ecosystems? Given that you know how unreliable flight ecosystems are and can quantify the delays, I'm assuming you have a basis for comparison in making such a confident statement.

Holy Extrapolation Batman! Or, "We can estimate, using data from extant high-speed rail networks." I think you'll find that HSR generally has good on-time performance where it is not forced to share lines with freight trains (ie, not Amtrak). Since there are no mag-lev freight trains, and no plans to build any, it's reasonable to think that mag-lev trains would only be affected by weather in very extreme circumstances (not your run of the mill snow storm).

On a train, you could comfortably eat dinner on the way.

Not sure why you're replying to my comment, I noted the upper competitive range of HSR against plane — as far as I'm concerned — is 1500km with 1000km for superiority. Denver to SF is more than 2000km, it's way beyond what I consider competitive HSR ranges with current techs.

On your personal advantage — most high speed train designs are pressure sealed nowadays, so there's even less than on conventional trains.

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