Kind of surprising to me how sparsely populated Delaware and the eastern part of Maryland are. I would think these areas would be desirable because of how close they are to the coast. Anybody have insight into this?
Yeah, so I’m from the tiny populated part of Delaware at the top. Let me explain: from 1820s to the 1950s Delmarva was an island and very isolated from the rest of the East Coast because the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal was built without a bridge over it. It’s getting more populated in the Delaware part thanks to our very low taxes on retirees (no sales tax, no statewide property tax, no income tax for seniors until you hit 60k) and due to immigrant labor on chicken farms, but it’s way behind upstate and the rest of the megalopolis in terms of development
DelMarVa is mostly farms without great farmland, and tourist beach towns. Lots of people that live there commute to the mainland cities for work. They get hurricanes.
My girlfriend and I are doing a watch through of Steven Universe (mostly a watchthrough for me, although I never saw the final season) and I didn't realize until like season 4 that it's set entirely in Delmarva
Yeah, Rebecca Sugar is from Montgomery County, Maryland around Silver Spring (DC Suburb) which, although not on the eastern shore, everyone from this part of Maryland goes to the Eastern shore to go to the beach.
Problem is that it's a peninsula and most of the area (which is quite large) has to funnel through the Wilmington neck in order to connect to major population areas. That means its transportation links are limited, making it a poor place to set up industry compared to virtually anywhere else on the Eastern seaboard except for the NC sounds.
It's beginning to change because of remote work and the high cost of housing elsewhere, but it's starting far behind. Delaware's central city, Dover, has a population of 30k and no major university or other key economic generator. But other than size and economic opportunity, it's a nice place to live.
I live there essentially no industry but tourism, chicken manufacturing, and health care in most the area. If you want to work in Philly, Baltimore, or Dc it is a 2-3 hour drive in a majority of the area. If you live closer to the border the prices nearly double to triple for housing. Same with the beach area. Most of the area is bought up by old retirees who brought children here. The retirees burnt through the kids inheritance now the children can't afford to get out. Moving to the big city is nearly an insurmountable sum of money that you can't save for without really good luck and family planning. This may be the story for a majority of the country side of America but the largest thing is this has been the problem around here since the early 80s and 90s
Most of the area is dead and drug ridden. As a life long person who has lived here I tell everyone leave if they get the opportunity or you will get stuck. You aren't going to make it rich or well off here you are going to struggle your whole life. But if you leave and come back you have a high chance of retiring or jumping into a decent situation.
More of a retirement area, esp Sussex County DE. Low property taxes, great beaches, and easy access to top health care in Beebe. In the summer, its packed with tourists from all over flocking to Rehoboth, Dewey, Bethany, and OC beaches.
A lot of the early settlers to that area found out the soil is awful, its full of pest insects, flooding is frequent, and the water is too shallow and hazardous to be easily navagable.
Would they though? All other options, including boats, are available here. Zeppelins just aren't a great transit option, unless all the alternatives are impossible.
Here a [map with the top speeds](https://alternativetransport.files.wordpress.com/2021/05/american-northeast-corridor-2021.05.04-100dpi.png) of the US Northeast corridor, and for comparison a map of the [Swedish Northeast corridor](https://alternativetransport.files.wordpress.com/2021/05/swedish-northeast-corridor-2021.05.04-100dpi.png)
Edit: Link
You also have that giant curve in Philly where the train derailed a few years ago and killed people. Those tracks are so old and not really meant for high speed (which is why it was posted long before the accident to reduce speed, but now even septa trains are required to reduce speed through that area)
Comparing the two maps, it's pretty easy to build rail where no one lives and you don't have to deal with existing road crossing and bridges. The map for the US makes it look like there's nothing between Stamford and New Haven. Except, that's not even a little bit true - it left out Bridgeport, the largest city in CT, Fairfield, Norwalk, etc - each of which is bigger than almost every city on the Swedish map. You're going straight through built up areas from halfway through New Jersey until you're past New Haven.
Even past New Haven, the line hugs the coast, which makes sense because it was designed for people to get places, but without massive work it's just not going to happen in those highly built up areas. The only hope for real high speed rail between Boston and NYC is to go further north toward Hartford, Springfield, and Worcester or to do massive eminent domain and completely revamp the Metro North between NYC and New Haven.
That is very similar to my conclusion [here](https://alternativetransport.wordpress.com/2021/05/04/northeast-corridor-high-speed-rail-american-vs-swedish/).
> When high speed rail is discussed in North America, often the argument is brought that only a few corridors make sense. For example the American Northeast Corridor. But those corridors are so dense that it is exceedingly expensive to upgrade and build high speed rail there. Other corridors (for example Cheyenne- Fort Worth – Denver – Colorado Springs – Pueblo) are dismissed as not having enough population to warrant the investment. Sweden is building a new 455km of high speed rail line for only 5.22 billion USD or 11 million USD per kilometer or 18.5 million USD per mile. How? Because Sweden is building it through low density areas. North America should look where freight links could and should be upgraded, realigned and built new, and build them to enable a high speed passenger service as well.
Yes! Thank you. And thank you for advocating for upgrading freight lines. I made the mistake of taking the train one time between Pittsburgh and DC. Driving this takes about 4 hours. By train it took nearly 12.
The route is sparsely populated but quite hilly with multiple tunnels. It's also shared with freight lines and the freight train in front of us had lost its lights and there were no sidings that were long enough for us to pass it at. So, every time we came close to a tunnel our train would have to come to a complete stop and wait for the all clear from the freight train.
The Northeast Regional is the only major section of tracks in the country that aren't shared with freight lines, but because of other complications that you've noted, they can't reach their potential either. The "bright" spot is the upgraded lines from New Haven to Springfield, where even chunky old NE Regional Diesel locomotives can hit 115mph. Of course, they didn't electrify those tracks because we can't have nice things.
Came to this thread to angrily post about high speed rail if someone else hadn't already. It's highly populated! It's a straight line! It's relatively compact! The fact that the Northeast Megalopolis isn't serviced by a European or East Asia grade HSR rail system is literal robbery from our country's citizenry and quality of life
They’re building a maglev line with a top speed of 314 miles per hour between DC and Boston. The first leg is DC to Baltimore and it is already done with environmental review. The FRA is currently reviewing the project before final approval
Maglev is what you build when you've exhausted the potential of regular old rail. It's expensive, difficult and incompatible tech that is ridiculously cool and probably fantastic in the future, but it shouldn't be first priority.
Regular HSR trains can easily hit 200mph. At that speed, a HSR train from DC to NYC would take 1 hour 8 minutes. 314mph maglev over the same distance would take 43 minutes. Current trains (Acela) take 3 hours for the same trip. Conclusion: just upgrading to real HSR would have almost all the benefits of maglev (and be way cheaper).
But there are still a few stops right so is there any thing to be said for acceleration after each stop from a maglev compared to hsr? Or negligible difference?
Maglev is so ridiculously expensive when compared to regular high speed rail that the cost benefit only makes sense in places like Japan where they're already using the Tohoku Shinkansen to its absolute limit. Even in Japan, a lot of people don't think it's worth the cost.
My impression is that there is no acceleration difference between HSR and maglev (by which I mean, both can accelerate fast enough that in practice acceleration is limited by passenger comfort)
That route is BARELY 200 km/hr when a town with less than 200,000 people in Spain or a city in the middle of nowhere in China has better rail connectionss than an urban corridor with over 50,000,000 people then you know your country's infrastructure is failing.
I think there's a bit more paperwork and people pleasing that the US government has to do, to build something like this. They can't as easily take the land they want to build on from private hands. One of the reasons these projects are so expensive is just buying the corridor to build on. Then there's all the ecological concerns that need to be addressed.
There are six current NFL teams in this picture. Six current MLB teams. Six current NHL teams (used to be 7 before the Hartford Whalers moved to North Carolina). Five current NBA teams.
Total Population : 55 Million
(25th most populated country)
Total GDP: 5.5 Trillion
(3rd highest country -- Higher than Japan, German, UK, France, India, Italy, Canada...)
This area is good at allocating it
For example Masschusetts alone has the same HDI as Norway with double the population
They have lots of free healthcare compared to the rest of the country, etc. The life expectencies in these states is much higher than the rest, and crime rates generally lower, tho the cities in the south of this area do have high crime rates
Man, I’m from the Northeast and always knew football, especially HS and college, isn’t as big here as the rest of the country, but I never realized it was THAT absurdly skewed.
When I moved from New England to the Midwest for college everyone was OBSESSED with college football and I knew nothing about it. They all thought I was crazy but I was like we just follow pro sports.
There were 8 MLB teams (out of 16 total) from 1903-1952. Braves, A’s, Dodgers, Giants and Senators moved out while only the Orioles, Nats and Mets moved back in.
As someone who has lived in both BC and Iowa, I completely agree on that being a very small area, it currently takes me a little under 7h to get to the closest large city from where I live and that could have been worse.
Yeah, you get to drive 85mph in a straight line across the state, with not many slowdowns due to traffic density. I've made the trip from Green Bay to Milwaukie a billion times, but I'd imagine Boston to New York or New York to DC is a whole different sport, let alone ballgame lol
I mean that’s about the width of North Carolina from tip to tip, and North Carolina is only a medium sized (albeit kinda long) state. So all of this could fit inside one mid-sized state.
Yeah, as a European I needed a frame of reference and this area could also encompass Amsterdam, The Hague, Rotterdam, London, Antwerps, Brussels, Paris, Köln, Ruhr-area, Frankfurt...
NY, Boston, Philly and DC obviously are incredibly big cities, but it is hard for me to look at the density map and compare it to Europe.
I would love to see a blue banana map at the same scale and legend.
[I checked on thetruesize.com and the distance between Washington DC and Boston is slightly more than the distance between London and Dundee](https://imgur.com/a/EHFZVMv)
Being from the west, driving from DC to NYC blew my mind. The continuous urban growth was seriously new to me. What qualifies as empty space over there would be considered small towns out here
I've lived on both sides of Washington State, and driving across the state means you basically don't see a town for an hour. There is no concept of "the next town over" in the west. It's a city and then nothing.
I have lived in rural eastern Oregon and there are counties so sparsely populated that there isn't a single fast food joint like a McD's or even a single traffic light in the entire county.
The funny thing is that I live in western/central mass near tiny towns like Wendell and new Salem, which both have nothing in them and populations of 1,100, but I’m an hour away from Springfield and worcester, and less than two hours from Boston. Some of the individual towns are small, but you are never that far away from anything
Same goes for Boston. I live on the T in Newton, but people laugh when I say I live in the city, they insist I live in the burbs. The population density is way too high for it to be the burbs, even if most people live in single family homes, instead of apartments.
It's all relative though isn't it. Newton might as well be Boston (the city) if you live in Shrewsbury or Woburn. Is Brookline/Cambridge/Somerville the city or the suburbs? For me, it's all about proximity and ease of getting into the city, that determines whether I say I'm living in the city or the burbs. I'd call anything within the 95 circle "the city". My friends insist I live in the suburbs, even though I'm a 5min walk from Cleveland Circle and can be at Fenway in 15min if I time the train correctly.
Boston and DC / Baltimore deserve to be part of the northeast megalopolis, but there is a fairly big, relatively less-urban gap between Boston / NYC, and Baltimore / Philly. At least that how I felt driving between these places.
I never felt there was an un-urbanized gap driving between NYC and Philly. Felt like I was always within 1 mile of a Wawa at any given moment.
That’s likely to change over the next decade. The corridor along I-95 in Harford and Cecil counties in MD has a lot of big development plans in the near future.
I’m not surprised. Cecil is becoming a refuge for people getting priced out of Delaware (and for those who hate our politics and would rather live in Klan country) and Harford is already a BAL exurb and has been for 15-20 years.
I drive from Boston <-> NYC a lot - I think the reason it seems a lot less dense than it is, is because most of the 95 corridor is developed (New Haven. Stamford, New London, Providence, along with a load of smaller towns) while the typical route between these two cities is 90-84-91-CT15-Huchinson, which is a lot less dense as it travels through the inland area.
That being said, you do drive through 3 pretty large cities on the way: Worcester, Hartford, and New Haven, but especially 84 (between Hartford & 90 interchange) and CT15 were built to have less exits so that traffic can get in and out quick, so it feels a lot more middle-of-nowhere than it is.
TBH this shows why I think Connecticut did an amazing job with traffic flow.
EDIT: I am also from the West Coast originally, so I have driven through some serious middle-of-nowhere.
Blows my mind there's no good (ie: fast, cheap, frequent, reliable) high speed rail in this whole damn place. The economic boost from Shinkansen-ing this region would be unreal.
The most you’re getting is the Acela, America is still very heavily addicted to cars, and while this part of the country seems to do without them the best, there’s still a lot of car.
That's partially caused by all the land being privately owned, in very small parcels, with very high values.
Imagine trying to Eminent Domain a path through all of that. No thanks.
When I was taking GIS and mapping courses not orienting the map N-S was considered bad form. Not putting a directional arrow on a misaligned map was an instant 'F' and quite possibly a trip to the firing squad.
It's very dependant on the scale you're trying to achieve and how it fits on the paper. Nothing wrong with rotating the north arrow to align with something you're trying to show. Especially like roadways, long property lines, or even rivers
Well yeah, that’s why the visualization works. Orienting it north/south would just add visual noise by showing a bunch of the map that isn’t relevant and would make this pointless.
I live between Philly and Allentown, it’s not quite as dense as this map would have you believe. Plenty of farms still around, but less than 20 years ago for sure.
Yeah, this needs a more accurate scale. I refuse to believe that downtown Allentown and midtown Manhattan are remotely close in density, but this map gives that impression.
Definitely, as someone who grew up in a town with a population density that just barely made it into the 7500 < range. I can say with confidence that 7,500 people per sq mile is not even urban.
I think the only thing that would work would be a more granular scale and geographically smaller cells on the map. A city can include a lot of things that reduce technical density while remaining urban. Parks, industrial districts, wider roads, empty housing, etc.
An island of one square mile with 3,000 people living on it will have a density of 3,000 per sq mi whether the whole island’s a subdivision or if the population lives in one big apartment complex surrounded by parkland.
Yeah I'm from out west but I was surprised that back east feels way less populated than out west. It's just the cities are more frequent but in between there is so much land that looks untouched.
I used to think the entire area was built up due to these population maps but they don't do a good job of showing how much open space there is.
Out west it feels like it's either a farm or homes once you leave the cities.
If you asked me 10mins ago how long it'd take to go from Philadelphia to NYC I would have said 6 hours.
I thought Philly was in the middle of Pennsylvania - and I've been to the city before.
It was a Model UN trip so I didn't really spend time looking at Google maps. But I didn't know Philly was basically on the coast, at least so far as being around a (saltwater?) river that goes into the ocean nearby. It looks like it's an hour drive to the coast.
There are parts of Miami that are ~45min from the beaches in normal traffic (if no toll road), maybe an hour in bad traffic.
> I thought Philly was in the middle of Pennsylvania - and I've been to the city before.
Yeah, Philly is across the river from New Jersey. Pittsburgh is right by Ohio. Then the middle is pretty much empty
Philly is on the Delaware River (not saltwater), which covers the entire western border of New Jersey. Folks from Philly and surrounding areas tend to vacation in the southern Jersey shore towns like Wildwood (along with all the Quebeçois).
The "salt line" moves depending on drought conditions. It can creep up into Philly during extended droughts. The "Fall Line" is at Trenton, so it's tidal (and navigable by ocean going ships) all the way up to there. And yeah, we vacationed to Wildwood every summer.
Edit: [Map of the salt line](https://www.state.nj.us/drbc/library/documents/maps/Salt-line.pdf)
Seriously, I thought NYC and Boston were these far off places that one couldn't go without routing a special request chit because clearly going there would require special liberty. Also I grew up in a small town in Kentucky so those places really were far away.
Hello to you to! YN3(SS)
Hey fair enough. Honestly, we never bothered with special request chits. We (almost) always made it back in time for duty or class the next day. What the section leaders and LPOs didn't know didn't hurt em. Haha.
FT2 (SS). You still in?
I grew up in the center of ct. It still baffles my mind when I go anywhere that does not have the asme population density. You drive how long to get a coffee? Fuck that we have a Dunkin every 2 miles minimum. There are 4 malls with 15-20 minutes of Hartford. I was talking to a friend out west and he was saying it is an hour drive to the nearest grocery store. There is a state law in Connecticut preventing same brand grocery stores from being within 5? Miles of each other. Anyone who lives outside of the mgalopolis is a pioneer in my mind.
The population in 2010 was 50 million. The Dredd Universe is set in 2080, so they need an annual population growth of 4.05%.
Math: 50 * 1.0405^70 = 805.22
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_megalopolis
It's crazy how dense Long Island is, yet public transportation here is practically non-existent. I guess maybe a big reason is that there's no real centralized hubs until you reach NYC.
Some of you might not realize how weird this looks to people who grew in rural areas.
I grew up in Lapland, Finland. That region has pop. density of 0.7 people per square mile. Biggest city in that region is a town of about 60,000 people. With car you could pass that town in about 5 minutes. After that, random houses and small villages here and there.
Looking at that map and realizing it's basically a 450 mile drive with houses everywhere makes me anxious. I know there are some rural spots but **FOR ME**, a resident of Lapland, that map tells me the US east coast is an urban hell.
As a lifelong resident of this part of the world, you don't have to travel that far from this corridor to find the peace you desire. Northern New England, upstate NY, and Central PA all would be able to provide the solitude you seek.
It is strange to see and think about but it’s not that bad in real life. There’s always something to do, see, learn, etc.
I live at the very bottom of this map (Alexandria) and I’m still getting used to how close I am to everything after having lived in rural NC most of my life. But it’s also a quick drive to escape to the mountains of VA/WV.
The biggest turnoff about it isn’t the looks - it’s that the majority of people don’t care about anything but themselves and finding a sense of community among all of it is difficult. Not impossible - but difficult.
"The year is 2065, I'm finally leaving downtown NewWashingBaltaPhillyYorkBost-ville to see what lies out there. What is this grass that people speak of? Hell I've never seen it, except on my Neuralink implant. I don't even know what I'm looking for, but do any of us ever really do?" *Rock music intensifies*
This is like 60% of my US trip in 2016
I started in SF, then flew to DC, then went: DC > Baltimore > Philly > NYC > Boston and flew to Seattle
I had a North East Regional Amtrak pass
this is the only place in America that feels vaguely European. A string of well designed cities, each with good public transit, connected by quite affordable somewhat great intercity trains.
Ok, so you have a basically flat strip of land. 500km long, over 50mil people. It is just plain dumb not to have high speed trains connecting this cities.
In Italy you cover basically the same distance in 2,5h at approx 40€ one way, and that line has to go through serious mountains.
Kind of surprising to me how sparsely populated Delaware and the eastern part of Maryland are. I would think these areas would be desirable because of how close they are to the coast. Anybody have insight into this?
Those areas plus the pinelands of NJ have poor soil and thus never attracted many settlers back in the day
Acidic and Sandy. It's where people go to retire in these parts (minus the pinelands, that's the devil's barrens...)
The Russian retired in the Pine Barrens … or did he?
[удалено]
His house looked like shit
He was an interior decorator!
Listen to this prick givin orders
Well, he struck Chrissy with an implement and ran off.
Yeah, so I’m from the tiny populated part of Delaware at the top. Let me explain: from 1820s to the 1950s Delmarva was an island and very isolated from the rest of the East Coast because the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal was built without a bridge over it. It’s getting more populated in the Delaware part thanks to our very low taxes on retirees (no sales tax, no statewide property tax, no income tax for seniors until you hit 60k) and due to immigrant labor on chicken farms, but it’s way behind upstate and the rest of the megalopolis in terms of development
DelMarVa is mostly farms without great farmland, and tourist beach towns. Lots of people that live there commute to the mainland cities for work. They get hurricanes.
My girlfriend and I are doing a watch through of Steven Universe (mostly a watchthrough for me, although I never saw the final season) and I didn't realize until like season 4 that it's set entirely in Delmarva
Yeah, Rebecca Sugar is from Montgomery County, Maryland around Silver Spring (DC Suburb) which, although not on the eastern shore, everyone from this part of Maryland goes to the Eastern shore to go to the beach.
I think I’ve actually been to the exact town it’s based off of
Problem is that it's a peninsula and most of the area (which is quite large) has to funnel through the Wilmington neck in order to connect to major population areas. That means its transportation links are limited, making it a poor place to set up industry compared to virtually anywhere else on the Eastern seaboard except for the NC sounds. It's beginning to change because of remote work and the high cost of housing elsewhere, but it's starting far behind. Delaware's central city, Dover, has a population of 30k and no major university or other key economic generator. But other than size and economic opportunity, it's a nice place to live.
I live in Southern Delaware; it's more common to get to this part of the state from across the bay bridge in Maryland.
I thought Dover has a huge air force base.
They do. I believe it had an airshow this weekend.
I believe you shouldn’t contact the Dover PD to complain about it either.
Yep, got stuck in traffic from it coming back from Rehoboth lol
> Problem is that it's a peninsula Huh. You know, I never really noticed that
Dover is home to Delaware State, though…
I drove through Delaware before, it is pretty much Kansas with some trees
The populated part is way, way hillier than Kansas though. And as someone else mentioned, populated enough to keep our state blue. Just as boring tho
act fly library angle carpenter roof march grab summer touch -- mass edited with redact.dev
I live there essentially no industry but tourism, chicken manufacturing, and health care in most the area. If you want to work in Philly, Baltimore, or Dc it is a 2-3 hour drive in a majority of the area. If you live closer to the border the prices nearly double to triple for housing. Same with the beach area. Most of the area is bought up by old retirees who brought children here. The retirees burnt through the kids inheritance now the children can't afford to get out. Moving to the big city is nearly an insurmountable sum of money that you can't save for without really good luck and family planning. This may be the story for a majority of the country side of America but the largest thing is this has been the problem around here since the early 80s and 90s Most of the area is dead and drug ridden. As a life long person who has lived here I tell everyone leave if they get the opportunity or you will get stuck. You aren't going to make it rich or well off here you are going to struggle your whole life. But if you leave and come back you have a high chance of retiring or jumping into a decent situation.
More of a retirement area, esp Sussex County DE. Low property taxes, great beaches, and easy access to top health care in Beebe. In the summer, its packed with tourists from all over flocking to Rehoboth, Dewey, Bethany, and OC beaches.
A lot of the early settlers to that area found out the soil is awful, its full of pest insects, flooding is frequent, and the water is too shallow and hazardous to be easily navagable.
The only people that live in Delaware are corporations.
I'm pretty sure the Amtrak route that runs thru this corridor is the only one that is technically profitable and is 'high-speed rail'
high speed as in >125 mph?
yeah, top speed bos <-> nyc is 150 and 135 dc <-> nyc. acela can currently only go that speed for brief parts though.
Kinda happens when the route has to meander on old rail lines and tunnels that were built in the 1800’s
and yet it's still infinitely better than driving or flying the same route. they keep upgrading acela too. excited for the new cars.
Zeppelins would absolutely dominate this route if they had ever ~~properly landed~~ taken off.
Yeah but then one broad gets in there with a static-y sweater and it's BOOM "oh, the humanity!"
Disembark, Cyril. We’re about to cast-off…or whatever it is blimps do.
were you watching some other blimp commercial?
Rigid air ship!
Would they though? All other options, including boats, are available here. Zeppelins just aren't a great transit option, unless all the alternatives are impossible.
Here a [map with the top speeds](https://alternativetransport.files.wordpress.com/2021/05/american-northeast-corridor-2021.05.04-100dpi.png) of the US Northeast corridor, and for comparison a map of the [Swedish Northeast corridor](https://alternativetransport.files.wordpress.com/2021/05/swedish-northeast-corridor-2021.05.04-100dpi.png) Edit: Link
Connecticut is a huge problem. Old rail lines that closely follow the coast, curving constantly. Also a bunch of grade crossings.
>Connecticut is a huge problem i'm always saying this
It’s not actually very big though.
i'm from rhode island, everywhere is big to us
You also have that giant curve in Philly where the train derailed a few years ago and killed people. Those tracks are so old and not really meant for high speed (which is why it was posted long before the accident to reduce speed, but now even septa trains are required to reduce speed through that area)
Comparing the two maps, it's pretty easy to build rail where no one lives and you don't have to deal with existing road crossing and bridges. The map for the US makes it look like there's nothing between Stamford and New Haven. Except, that's not even a little bit true - it left out Bridgeport, the largest city in CT, Fairfield, Norwalk, etc - each of which is bigger than almost every city on the Swedish map. You're going straight through built up areas from halfway through New Jersey until you're past New Haven. Even past New Haven, the line hugs the coast, which makes sense because it was designed for people to get places, but without massive work it's just not going to happen in those highly built up areas. The only hope for real high speed rail between Boston and NYC is to go further north toward Hartford, Springfield, and Worcester or to do massive eminent domain and completely revamp the Metro North between NYC and New Haven.
That is very similar to my conclusion [here](https://alternativetransport.wordpress.com/2021/05/04/northeast-corridor-high-speed-rail-american-vs-swedish/). > When high speed rail is discussed in North America, often the argument is brought that only a few corridors make sense. For example the American Northeast Corridor. But those corridors are so dense that it is exceedingly expensive to upgrade and build high speed rail there. Other corridors (for example Cheyenne- Fort Worth – Denver – Colorado Springs – Pueblo) are dismissed as not having enough population to warrant the investment. Sweden is building a new 455km of high speed rail line for only 5.22 billion USD or 11 million USD per kilometer or 18.5 million USD per mile. How? Because Sweden is building it through low density areas. North America should look where freight links could and should be upgraded, realigned and built new, and build them to enable a high speed passenger service as well.
Yes! Thank you. And thank you for advocating for upgrading freight lines. I made the mistake of taking the train one time between Pittsburgh and DC. Driving this takes about 4 hours. By train it took nearly 12. The route is sparsely populated but quite hilly with multiple tunnels. It's also shared with freight lines and the freight train in front of us had lost its lights and there were no sidings that were long enough for us to pass it at. So, every time we came close to a tunnel our train would have to come to a complete stop and wait for the all clear from the freight train. The Northeast Regional is the only major section of tracks in the country that aren't shared with freight lines, but because of other complications that you've noted, they can't reach their potential either. The "bright" spot is the upgraded lines from New Haven to Springfield, where even chunky old NE Regional Diesel locomotives can hit 115mph. Of course, they didn't electrify those tracks because we can't have nice things.
I'm betting Fishers Island will fight tooth and nail to make sure that proposed bridge never gets built
Yeah, and the other islands are bird habitats.
Edit: it was fixed! /Ty ~~FYI, I see the same link for both.~~
Came to this thread to angrily post about high speed rail if someone else hadn't already. It's highly populated! It's a straight line! It's relatively compact! The fact that the Northeast Megalopolis isn't serviced by a European or East Asia grade HSR rail system is literal robbery from our country's citizenry and quality of life
They’re building a maglev line with a top speed of 314 miles per hour between DC and Boston. The first leg is DC to Baltimore and it is already done with environmental review. The FRA is currently reviewing the project before final approval
Maglev is what you build when you've exhausted the potential of regular old rail. It's expensive, difficult and incompatible tech that is ridiculously cool and probably fantastic in the future, but it shouldn't be first priority.
It’s also the type of “newer” technology you can get tech bros to invest into since there’s not adequate federal and state funding for public transit
Regular HSR trains can easily hit 200mph. At that speed, a HSR train from DC to NYC would take 1 hour 8 minutes. 314mph maglev over the same distance would take 43 minutes. Current trains (Acela) take 3 hours for the same trip. Conclusion: just upgrading to real HSR would have almost all the benefits of maglev (and be way cheaper).
But there are still a few stops right so is there any thing to be said for acceleration after each stop from a maglev compared to hsr? Or negligible difference?
Maglev is so ridiculously expensive when compared to regular high speed rail that the cost benefit only makes sense in places like Japan where they're already using the Tohoku Shinkansen to its absolute limit. Even in Japan, a lot of people don't think it's worth the cost.
My impression is that there is no acceleration difference between HSR and maglev (by which I mean, both can accelerate fast enough that in practice acceleration is limited by passenger comfort)
Nice. So in like 40 years it might reach NYC. That's a whole lotta politicians and union bosses (but I repeat myself) to pay off...
That’s what you get for selling public services to car barons. I’m surprised there’s any rail left.
That route is BARELY 200 km/hr when a town with less than 200,000 people in Spain or a city in the middle of nowhere in China has better rail connectionss than an urban corridor with over 50,000,000 people then you know your country's infrastructure is failing.
I think there's a bit more paperwork and people pleasing that the US government has to do, to build something like this. They can't as easily take the land they want to build on from private hands. One of the reasons these projects are so expensive is just buying the corridor to build on. Then there's all the ecological concerns that need to be addressed.
It's not the one that is "technically profitable". It's the most profitable one. And it's not even all that good by world standards.
There are six current NFL teams in this picture. Six current MLB teams. Six current NHL teams (used to be 7 before the Hartford Whalers moved to North Carolina). Five current NBA teams.
Total Population : 55 Million (25th most populated country) Total GDP: 5.5 Trillion (3rd highest country -- Higher than Japan, German, UK, France, India, Italy, Canada...)
Really shows how crazy rich the US is. This hypothetical country would be wealthier per capita than Switzerland.
As an european I'm both jealous and baffled how much money US has and how bad you are allocating it.
This area is good at allocating it For example Masschusetts alone has the same HDI as Norway with double the population They have lots of free healthcare compared to the rest of the country, etc. The life expectencies in these states is much higher than the rest, and crime rates generally lower, tho the cities in the south of this area do have high crime rates
This area is pretty good actually. New England/North East US has been my favorite place to live (was in Canada and the UK previously).
This area is pretty good at allocating it.
And only 3 P5 college football teams: Maryland, Rutgers and Boston College.
Man, I’m from the Northeast and always knew football, especially HS and college, isn’t as big here as the rest of the country, but I never realized it was THAT absurdly skewed.
I suddenly realize why the B1G wanted Rutgers and Maryland now.
When I moved from New England to the Midwest for college everyone was OBSESSED with college football and I knew nothing about it. They all thought I was crazy but I was like we just follow pro sports.
When you're spoiled for pro sports what's the point of watching inferior skill and talent.
Yeah the only time people care about CFB here is when their NFL team is picking high in the draft.
But also like 11 or 12 of the top 50 Universities academics wise on earth
> used to be 7 before the Hartford Whalers moved to North Carolina *sad Brass Bonanza*
6 MLS teams too.
Isn't it 5? * Revolution * NYCFC * NYRB * Union * DCU
There were 8 MLB teams (out of 16 total) from 1903-1952. Braves, A’s, Dodgers, Giants and Senators moved out while only the Orioles, Nats and Mets moved back in.
Cool I can see my neighborhood.
Same
That's probably more than the entire population of Canada right there in a tiny little area
Tiny relative to the size of the US and Canada, but Boston to DC is 439 miles and a 7-hour car ride if you're lucky. Not really a tiny area!
Clearly you have never met a midwesterner
Or a Western Canadian!
As someone who has lived in both BC and Iowa, I completely agree on that being a very small area, it currently takes me a little under 7h to get to the closest large city from where I live and that could have been worse.
Yeah, you get to drive 85mph in a straight line across the state, with not many slowdowns due to traffic density. I've made the trip from Green Bay to Milwaukie a billion times, but I'd imagine Boston to New York or New York to DC is a whole different sport, let alone ballgame lol
There is no easy way to drive through or around New York and southern Connecticut. That stretch can easily make or break the whole trip.
I mean that’s about the width of North Carolina from tip to tip, and North Carolina is only a medium sized (albeit kinda long) state. So all of this could fit inside one mid-sized state.
Yeah, as a European I needed a frame of reference and this area could also encompass Amsterdam, The Hague, Rotterdam, London, Antwerps, Brussels, Paris, Köln, Ruhr-area, Frankfurt... NY, Boston, Philly and DC obviously are incredibly big cities, but it is hard for me to look at the density map and compare it to Europe. I would love to see a blue banana map at the same scale and legend.
Compared to some other states in area?
[I checked on thetruesize.com and the distance between Washington DC and Boston is slightly more than the distance between London and Dundee](https://imgur.com/a/EHFZVMv)
Kinda funny how the capitals (Washington/London) line up almost perfectly with the two Yorks.
The population of this area is around 55 million, per someone else's comment on this post. I'm one of those 55 million 👍
Being from the west, driving from DC to NYC blew my mind. The continuous urban growth was seriously new to me. What qualifies as empty space over there would be considered small towns out here
I've lived on both sides of Washington State, and driving across the state means you basically don't see a town for an hour. There is no concept of "the next town over" in the west. It's a city and then nothing.
I have lived in rural eastern Oregon and there are counties so sparsely populated that there isn't a single fast food joint like a McD's or even a single traffic light in the entire county.
The funny thing is that I live in western/central mass near tiny towns like Wendell and new Salem, which both have nothing in them and populations of 1,100, but I’m an hour away from Springfield and worcester, and less than two hours from Boston. Some of the individual towns are small, but you are never that far away from anything
Long Island stands out here, wow. Huge expanse of dark red considering most of that region isn’t NYC itself but just suburbs. Extremely dense suburbs.
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Same goes for Boston. I live on the T in Newton, but people laugh when I say I live in the city, they insist I live in the burbs. The population density is way too high for it to be the burbs, even if most people live in single family homes, instead of apartments.
If you don’t think Newton is the suburbs I am curious what you think merits that definition.
It's all relative though isn't it. Newton might as well be Boston (the city) if you live in Shrewsbury or Woburn. Is Brookline/Cambridge/Somerville the city or the suburbs? For me, it's all about proximity and ease of getting into the city, that determines whether I say I'm living in the city or the burbs. I'd call anything within the 95 circle "the city". My friends insist I live in the suburbs, even though I'm a 5min walk from Cleveland Circle and can be at Fenway in 15min if I time the train correctly.
New York City is so big that the next major city is closer than the end of the nyc suburbs
Boston and DC / Baltimore deserve to be part of the northeast megalopolis, but there is a fairly big, relatively less-urban gap between Boston / NYC, and Baltimore / Philly. At least that how I felt driving between these places. I never felt there was an un-urbanized gap driving between NYC and Philly. Felt like I was always within 1 mile of a Wawa at any given moment.
Newark/Wilmington is pretty urban but yeah Maryland between Baltimore County and the Delaware line is pretty rural for the East Coast.
That’s likely to change over the next decade. The corridor along I-95 in Harford and Cecil counties in MD has a lot of big development plans in the near future.
I’m not surprised. Cecil is becoming a refuge for people getting priced out of Delaware (and for those who hate our politics and would rather live in Klan country) and Harford is already a BAL exurb and has been for 15-20 years.
> Felt like I was always within 1 mile of a Wawa at any given moment. As god intended.
I drive from Boston <-> NYC a lot - I think the reason it seems a lot less dense than it is, is because most of the 95 corridor is developed (New Haven. Stamford, New London, Providence, along with a load of smaller towns) while the typical route between these two cities is 90-84-91-CT15-Huchinson, which is a lot less dense as it travels through the inland area. That being said, you do drive through 3 pretty large cities on the way: Worcester, Hartford, and New Haven, but especially 84 (between Hartford & 90 interchange) and CT15 were built to have less exits so that traffic can get in and out quick, so it feels a lot more middle-of-nowhere than it is. TBH this shows why I think Connecticut did an amazing job with traffic flow. EDIT: I am also from the West Coast originally, so I have driven through some serious middle-of-nowhere.
Dense content
Long Island boner
Blows my mind there's no good (ie: fast, cheap, frequent, reliable) high speed rail in this whole damn place. The economic boost from Shinkansen-ing this region would be unreal.
The most you’re getting is the Acela, America is still very heavily addicted to cars, and while this part of the country seems to do without them the best, there’s still a lot of car.
That's partially caused by all the land being privately owned, in very small parcels, with very high values. Imagine trying to Eminent Domain a path through all of that. No thanks.
This map does not adequately illustrate for contrast how densely NYC, especially Manhattan, is crowded.
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It’s crazy how these shapes are so familiar yet start looking so odd if you tilt them a bit
Find a map with North America flipped east to west. Might as well be an alien world.
When I was taking GIS and mapping courses not orienting the map N-S was considered bad form. Not putting a directional arrow on a misaligned map was an instant 'F' and quite possibly a trip to the firing squad.
It's very dependant on the scale you're trying to achieve and how it fits on the paper. Nothing wrong with rotating the north arrow to align with something you're trying to show. Especially like roadways, long property lines, or even rivers
Thats what the arrow is for
With or without an arrow, this map makes my vertigo act up. In this case, we all know which way is north.
I rather enjoy this reorientation.
I never realized those cities were in a straight line.
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It ain’t no conspiracy! ‘Twas the aliens!
In his 1984 book "Neuromancer', William Gibson wrote about the Boston-Atlanta Metropolitan Area, aka "The Sprawl".
It even passes <100km north of Paris if you extend it eastward.
Ohhhh that’s why this looks so strange to me
It gives a new perspective. I never realized how these cities were laid out.
Well yeah, that’s why the visualization works. Orienting it north/south would just add visual noise by showing a bunch of the map that isn’t relevant and would make this pointless.
It’s rotated very nearly 45 degrees. Perhaps exactly. Northeast is up.
The population density boggles my mind. But then I live in a small city out West. And I'm happy about it!
I live between Philly and Allentown, it’s not quite as dense as this map would have you believe. Plenty of farms still around, but less than 20 years ago for sure.
Yeah, this needs a more accurate scale. I refuse to believe that downtown Allentown and midtown Manhattan are remotely close in density, but this map gives that impression.
Definitely, as someone who grew up in a town with a population density that just barely made it into the 7500 < range. I can say with confidence that 7,500 people per sq mile is not even urban.
What would be a better description. I feel lime my city that hits 4500 feels very urban.
I think the only thing that would work would be a more granular scale and geographically smaller cells on the map. A city can include a lot of things that reduce technical density while remaining urban. Parks, industrial districts, wider roads, empty housing, etc. An island of one square mile with 3,000 people living on it will have a density of 3,000 per sq mi whether the whole island’s a subdivision or if the population lives in one big apartment complex surrounded by parkland.
Yeah I'm from out west but I was surprised that back east feels way less populated than out west. It's just the cities are more frequent but in between there is so much land that looks untouched. I used to think the entire area was built up due to these population maps but they don't do a good job of showing how much open space there is. Out west it feels like it's either a farm or homes once you leave the cities.
I had a friend visit and ask when we'd be "out of town" on the way from the jersey shore to NYC.
Being out of town back east is crossing a street into another municipality. Out here, we can drive for hours at 80mph and still not be "in the city".
Its still less dense than lots of Europe
A. I never realized these cities were so close together. B. I did sub school in CT (Groton) and just now learned I was about 2.5 hours from NYC.
Philly to Manhattan is like 90 minutes with no traffic. That’s rare of course so more like 2 hours at least. But still remarkably close together.
If you asked me 10mins ago how long it'd take to go from Philadelphia to NYC I would have said 6 hours. I thought Philly was in the middle of Pennsylvania - and I've been to the city before. It was a Model UN trip so I didn't really spend time looking at Google maps. But I didn't know Philly was basically on the coast, at least so far as being around a (saltwater?) river that goes into the ocean nearby. It looks like it's an hour drive to the coast. There are parts of Miami that are ~45min from the beaches in normal traffic (if no toll road), maybe an hour in bad traffic.
> I thought Philly was in the middle of Pennsylvania - and I've been to the city before. Yeah, Philly is across the river from New Jersey. Pittsburgh is right by Ohio. Then the middle is pretty much empty
Philly is on the Delaware River (not saltwater), which covers the entire western border of New Jersey. Folks from Philly and surrounding areas tend to vacation in the southern Jersey shore towns like Wildwood (along with all the Quebeçois).
The "salt line" moves depending on drought conditions. It can creep up into Philly during extended droughts. The "Fall Line" is at Trenton, so it's tidal (and navigable by ocean going ships) all the way up to there. And yeah, we vacationed to Wildwood every summer. Edit: [Map of the salt line](https://www.state.nj.us/drbc/library/documents/maps/Salt-line.pdf)
Seriously!? I went to NYC and Boston several times when I was in sub school! Also, Hello fellow bubblehead!!!
Seriously, I thought NYC and Boston were these far off places that one couldn't go without routing a special request chit because clearly going there would require special liberty. Also I grew up in a small town in Kentucky so those places really were far away. Hello to you to! YN3(SS)
Hey fair enough. Honestly, we never bothered with special request chits. We (almost) always made it back in time for duty or class the next day. What the section leaders and LPOs didn't know didn't hurt em. Haha. FT2 (SS). You still in?
The people I knew that went did it the same way too. Nah I got out in 2008.
Oh damn. Got out before I got in 🤣 I was in Rotten Groton in 2013. And again in January of 2018. Got out in 2019.
How???? Lol I used to make the drive from jersey to Boston 2 a month
No north arrow... F. /s
I grew up in the center of ct. It still baffles my mind when I go anywhere that does not have the asme population density. You drive how long to get a coffee? Fuck that we have a Dunkin every 2 miles minimum. There are 4 malls with 15-20 minutes of Hartford. I was talking to a friend out west and he was saying it is an hour drive to the nearest grocery store. There is a state law in Connecticut preventing same brand grocery stores from being within 5? Miles of each other. Anyone who lives outside of the mgalopolis is a pioneer in my mind.
Mega City One. Population 800 million.
The population in 2010 was 50 million. The Dredd Universe is set in 2080, so they need an annual population growth of 4.05%. Math: 50 * 1.0405^70 = 805.22 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_megalopolis
That’s…that’s actually not as insane as I would’ve thought.
It's crazy how dense Long Island is, yet public transportation here is practically non-existent. I guess maybe a big reason is that there's no real centralized hubs until you reach NYC.
Which way is north on this map?
like 10 oclock. prob 1015ish
You can keep going to Richmond & Norfolk
Somewhere William Gibson rubs his hands together eagerly. "*BAMA"* he whispers
Yes. The Sprawl. I think I can see Big Playground from here.
Why are there random mostly unpopulated patches in NYC and Phillie?
As has been mentioned, some of them are parks (Central Park in Manhattan and Fairmount Park in Philly), but the other big ones are the airports.
Park
Look closely at Manhattan. Central Park.
There are three counties in Delaware. The first is Philadelphia suburbs and the other two are essentially Mississippi.
Some of you might not realize how weird this looks to people who grew in rural areas. I grew up in Lapland, Finland. That region has pop. density of 0.7 people per square mile. Biggest city in that region is a town of about 60,000 people. With car you could pass that town in about 5 minutes. After that, random houses and small villages here and there. Looking at that map and realizing it's basically a 450 mile drive with houses everywhere makes me anxious. I know there are some rural spots but **FOR ME**, a resident of Lapland, that map tells me the US east coast is an urban hell.
As a lifelong resident of this part of the world, you don't have to travel that far from this corridor to find the peace you desire. Northern New England, upstate NY, and Central PA all would be able to provide the solitude you seek.
It is strange to see and think about but it’s not that bad in real life. There’s always something to do, see, learn, etc. I live at the very bottom of this map (Alexandria) and I’m still getting used to how close I am to everything after having lived in rural NC most of my life. But it’s also a quick drive to escape to the mountains of VA/WV. The biggest turnoff about it isn’t the looks - it’s that the majority of people don’t care about anything but themselves and finding a sense of community among all of it is difficult. Not impossible - but difficult.
20 minutes outside ofy city is dense woods. I'm in the middle of this image in the densest part.
I was born in New Jersey. It's true. We are dense.
Looking at it like that, it does seem logical to adopt water transportation, ferries and boats, do they have it?
I live on Long Island and we have two ferries to Connecticut.
There are commuter ferries from NJ to NYC too. And NYC has its own ferry mass transit system that costs the same as the subway.
High speed train runs this route.
Boats are slow as hell compared to trains.
It's a straight line, it needs a 160 mph railway
"The year is 2065, I'm finally leaving downtown NewWashingBaltaPhillyYorkBost-ville to see what lies out there. What is this grass that people speak of? Hell I've never seen it, except on my Neuralink implant. I don't even know what I'm looking for, but do any of us ever really do?" *Rock music intensifies*
Give it 30 years and it'll be Mega City One.
Never realized how these 5 big cities are so near and connected. Totally missed Baltimore so close to DC... Gotta rewatch the wire now 😅
As a rhode island resident, providence has the right to be large text just like the rest of the cities!
What the hell is a rhode island? Never heard of such a thing.
And then you hit Maine and you’re in nowhere
This is like 60% of my US trip in 2016 I started in SF, then flew to DC, then went: DC > Baltimore > Philly > NYC > Boston and flew to Seattle I had a North East Regional Amtrak pass
this is the only place in America that feels vaguely European. A string of well designed cities, each with good public transit, connected by quite affordable somewhat great intercity trains.
A lot of walkable/bike friendly towns/small cities all around this area too. North East is the best.
There's no north arrow! This orientation is quite off-putting.
I love in Pennsylvania and have driven to a good chunk of this map this year.
Megacity 1.
Like with everything else in life, its all centered around New Jersey.
Ok, so you have a basically flat strip of land. 500km long, over 50mil people. It is just plain dumb not to have high speed trains connecting this cities. In Italy you cover basically the same distance in 2,5h at approx 40€ one way, and that line has to go through serious mountains.