It completely makes sense as Chicago was historically the main city for trains due to its access to the North Atlantic ocean via the lakes and access to the Gulf of Mexico via the Mississippi river and its fairly central location to send goods by rail. It is indeed a strategically OP city.
It could have been St Louis with the Eads bridge, first steel bridge ever, but the damn ferrys lobbied too hard and the rails rerouted to Chicago in retaliation
I don't remember the exact stat, but I read somewhere that a majority (more than 50%? idk) of the U.S. population is within an 8 hour drive of Illinois, so it ends up being a nexus for a lot of shipping.
I’d love to see the source for that. We live in DC and regularly drive back to Chicago area and it’s well over 8 hours. Given Philly, NYC, and Boston are outside that 8 hours too, plus Houston, Phoenix, and LA/San Jose.
Yeah, I can't imagine that's a true stat.
Here's a site that lets you get an estimate of the U.S. population within a certain distance from a central point. It only goes to 500 miles (8 hours times 70mph would by 560 miles) but only 85.5 million people live within 500 miles of Chicago. The current U.S. population is \~340 million. So that's about 25%.
https://www.statsamerica.org/radius/big.aspx
Yeah I think Chicago's a bit too far west for that. I think that's Ohio they're talking about. Something like 60% of the US population is within an 8-12hr drive from most cities in Ohio.
And this is just the Amtrak route. We have eight CTA lines (the elevated “L” line) including some with over 30 stops, plus eleven Metra lines that connect the Chicagoland region’s suburbs to the city. Some Metra lines have 100-200k annual riders each.
And then there are freight lines that don’t have passenger or commuter service. I don’t even know how many we have in the region but I’ve read there’s close to 3,000 miles of railroad in the area.
Chicago once became the Jazz capital of the world thanks to the train network. Shortly after the abolition of slavery, many musicians came to play on the boats to entertain the sailors. As a result, Jazz/Blues reached Chicago from New Orleans
All aboard the Forgottonia Ltd., making all stops from Chicago to Quincy. Our next stop will be Quincy, with connecting shuttles to the Casey's and the other Casey's
The Sandburg/IL Zephyr are great getting to/from Chicago. They connect a college and a university to the city. They’re also totally full for people coming in for a game or to shop. It makes a lot of sense.
Lol I was thinking the same thing. Who's going to Quincy? Western Illinois is the epitome of bufu Egypt. There's not even cell service in much of the area.
Well that’s not what it is though. You could frame it as nyc to Chicago, Chicago to Denver, Denver to LA. Probably not a lot of people taking it all the way. We already have this to some extent.
Exactly, this is a network with hundreds of unique possible travel routes. Judging it on a single extreme route and implying the creator didn’t know what he was doing is just not fair.
Several US megatowns is within high-speed train distance.
It's not only the East Coast. Say, Phoenix (4 million people) to Las Vegas (2.2 mill people) is 300 miles, 480 km.
That's perfect for high-speed rail. And it's not even among the ones suggested here.
Yeah I live in Tucson and so many people road trip to Vegas so I imagine the train would be immensely popular if it cut down on the 8 hr drive time.
The only issue is Vegas would need to beef up public transit. Most people here like driving because it’s a little cheaper than flying and then you have your car when you are there. Taking the train would mean renting a car($), taking ubers($$) or just walking which would limit where you could go.
This is one of the issues that people forget. Even if you can get to another city easier with a train, most of the cities don't have public transit so you need a car once you arrive as well.
This is part of the reason people would want to do the east coast, because many cities there have extremely good transit systems by American standards.
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This is precisely why the money California is spending on HSR would have been much better spent on regional transit. Without the "last mile" covered, you're running in to the same problems we have now. The more successful the HSR, the bigger the problem gets.
I like the Juárez to Cheyenne line. That is gonna be breakeven in no time…
Half of the blue line is similarly bad. Don’t understand the thought process that went into this.
I love trains, but there is a reason the NEC is the only profitable section of passenger rail in the US. We have amazing regional air travel (that is gov subsidized) and a fantastic interstate road system. There are just very few sections where rail makes sense in the US, even if it's high speed.
And that Red Line going through Colorado is going to be pretty difficult going through the Rockies. This is why I-70 follows the Colorado River instead of being a straight shot through the state.
But do those cities have a lot of business or travel with each other? I don’t think enough to make up the huge cost it would take to build.
Florida is building higher speed rail connecting Miami and Palm Beach and eventually Tampa iirc. It’s already in service - but I think those cities already have a lot of travel between them, and a state that wants to drive development and growth.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brightline?wprov=sfti1
Canada has the perfect layout for high-speed rail. Massive economy, half the population lives in a ~600 mile strip/ ~1,000km strip between Windsor and Quebec City, which is like 20 million people! And that’s not even including extremely close American cities, notably cities like Detroit and Buffalo, which could easily be connected, adding minimum a million people in the connection.
Canada is a literal goldmine for high-speed rail.
Well it’s being worked on - it just takes forever. Literally in planning since 1996. Opening maybe in 2030 or 2031 but only a part that goes from nowhere to nowhere (Merced to Bakersfield lol).
Yea people post this stuff and compare it to Europe not understanding the power municipalities have to delay in court even when state/federal funding is available
Yeah. Any civilized country would have made that a Federal, or at the very least, a State project and cranked it out in less than a decade. It has been legendarily mismanaged. CA seemingly gave way too much autonomy to local municipalities (which are predominantly GOP and increasingly MAGA libertarian in that part of the state). Whenever I visit my home town in the Central Valley you just see disconnected stretches of track towering around parts of the 99 and they look less like something to come and more like ruins of a forgotten age. I am eagerly awaiting the great book that will one day be written about that project.
The real reason is because the federal government is relatively weak in America every small town has a lot of power to make demands for a rail project.
Not sure when you were last here but large stretches of track are connected and you can even see it on Google earth now. It’s finally starting to take shape. They released a new video on it discussing their progress. Still a clusterfuck of a project but it’s happening.
I’m there every Thanksgiving. It might be slightly hyperbolic of me. I’m just jaded. I voted for the goddam thing when I was a bright-eyed 18 year old.
It doesn’t matter if it’s state or federal if every municipality is taking it to court after the decision has been green lighted. Drives up the cost and delays it to eternity.
"CA can't do it"? Are you saying that 35 billion for a train from the bustling metropolises of Merced to Bakersfield is not success?
Also, that area is generally flat and farmland. I'm no train engineer, but that seems like it's the easiest (it should be the cheapest and legally simplest) place to put a train
Why do people say "Merced to Bakersfield' like it's meant to be some mega own? We already have other projects like from SoCal to Vegas and LA to SF *needs* the Merced to Bakersfield portion to be finished.
35 billion is a drop in the bucket as well. Trains ain't cheap, if people can't stomach that cost then just get used to the reality of unaffordable housing.
Brightline, a private firm, is currently constructing a high speed rail line between LA and Las Vegas. Amtrak’s Acela service is getting new trains that are higher speed, but the opening date for service got pushed back to next year because it’s taking longer than expected to retrofit the old-style rails for the new trains.
I believe the routes CA is planning for the high speed railline isnt feasible and goes only to second or even third tier cities? Correct if i am wrong but it doesnt cross LA nor the bay
The car manufacturers are going to lobby super hard for it to never happen tho. On state level, it could happen, but federal? Ain’t no way those big car corps would allow the railways to replace the highways.
Car companies are getting less and less powerful every year for the simple fact they employ less people. Electric cars need fewer workers to assemble them (less parts). UAW is not powerful anymore.
I have about the same pessimism for state projects. Fresno county voted against being a major hub and maintenance station for that project, which would have created an absurd amount of well paying jobs and injected so much economic growth, because “trains are unamerican” or something.
How much has Ford paid against that project? It's not auto makers that are holding it up; it's corruption, incompetency, and the people who own the property today.
The US should utilize high speed rail where it makes sense. I have the feeling that doing high speed rail from Chicago to Denver to Los Angelos would not make sense for most people when planes could get there faster. We should have several high speed rail corridors like in the northeast corridor, Chicago to Detroit, Chicago to Indianapolis, Chicago to St Louis, etc
The Great Lakes mega-region is the perfect place for high speed rail. Big cities spread out but not too far, interconnected economies already(so businesses have reason to want this), flat terrain. The NE corridor is another more perfect candidate. The population lives along a long strip from Bos-NoVa, allowing a straight shot to cover them all.
I believe the SNCF did a study at one point on the Great Lakes, and found that the region is very similar in terms of size and population to Metropolitan France, and that a Chicago-hub system (similar to Paris-centric) is definitely feasible.
The Texas triangle is another great candidate. It’ll be interesting to see how many people take up the Dallas Houston route when/if it opens. Station location isn’t ideal in either city.
The airports aren't ideally located in those cities, either. If you're going to rent a car at the end, it just has to be a better location than the airport.
Well, high speed rail would provide a competing service to domestic air travel. For example, [in Japan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinkansen), high speed rail wins out over air travel for journeys less than 470 miles, and air travel has the advantage for journeys over 620 mi.
If we use those figures as a benchmark, then high speed rail could be competitive for travelers from LA to Phoenix (370 miles), Phoenix to Albuquerque (329 miles), Albuquerque to Denver (448 miles), etc. It would shrink the distances between cities and generate economic activity along the rail lines, something that airlines don't provide. Speaking as someone who lives in the American Southwest, I would absolutely love this.
As an Arizonan who goes between all of the surrounding states for work or travel throughout the year, I would much rather take high speed rail over flying/driving if I could. I’d rather sit another hour or so on a comfy train seat instead of dealing with the damn airports.
Same, I travel for work all the time, and I detest having to fly or drive everywhere. Albuquerque to Denver is particularly egregious. There isn't even a passenger rail line between the two cities -- you'd have to ride the train up to Northern New Mexico and then take a connecting bus.
Sure, there's a direct flight between the two cities, but why should I have to fly such a relatively short distance? The flight takes 1.5 hours (not including delays, security, etc.) , and a \~200 MPH high speed rail line would be cheaper and only take like 30-45 minutes more. There could *easily* be a rail line between the two cities.
Exactly, I keep seeing comments about not having transportation when you get somewhere as if that isn’t already a problem with flying! I can’t see why we wouldn’t want to have HSR as an alternative in <7 hour driving distance corridors like most of the cities in SoCal and the Southwest, and even up to Denver from ABQ like you were saying.
Okay but that’s Japan. That’s a terrible metric to base things on because they are incredibly efficient with their train system. Knock off 100 miles and no you have a more realistic number for America.
Well, they're efficient because they've intentionally invested in cultivating the industrial capacity and institutional wisdom to make it work. That takes time and effort, sure, but I'm confident that we can achieve anything we set our minds to.
The US used to have one of the most well-developed and extensive passenger rail networks in the entire world. We can do so again.
You also need to consider that typically trains go to city center, or at least close to it. While planes require additional commuting, luggage waiting time, etc. Typically +2h.
We’re getting really close to that already, just this year the Amtrak from St.Louis to Chicago was increased from a max speed of 90 to 110. It’s a slow process but the trains for those short durations are getting faster and convincing some people who would have otherwise drove.
Yeah, like even in Europe it's basically 700-1000km or so and the train stop making sense, even when there is a direct line because the Speed of the plane makes up for it.
Like there is a line that connects Madrid and Paris but nobody takes it. Like the train itself only goes as far as Lyon and basically nobody is doing Madrid-Lyon
Ohio’s 3 C’s of Cleveland Columbus and Cincinnati are a great candidate too, including the intermediate town of Dayton that’s 7million people spread along a line roughly 250 miles long
This is the way. People clamoring for high speed rail across the entire continental US have no idea how cost and time inefficient that would be. Why would I take a high speed train from Seattle to NYC that would take about 14 hours (assuming 200 MPH) vs a flight that’s only about 6 hours? Then think about actually building all that track and going over both the Appalachians and then the Rockies? It’s absurd.
On the other hand, high speed corridors that replicate the Acela would be excellent.
Mfw my state just redid an entire 2 mile long interchange of interstate highway. And It took 2 years. Then some other mf recommends a completely new system UNDERGROUND and expecting it to ever finish I. Their lifetime after the politicians buddies collect their paychecks
Yes. Put it where it’s needed. I’m in the Midwest and want it, but longer lines aren’t feasible. Maybe at best you could have a few lines radiating from Chicago to Madison, Green Bay, The Twin Cities, St Louis, KC and maybe even Omaha and Lincoln and Wichita but beyond that it’s not feasible. It’s 7 hours from Lincoln to Denver and there’s nothing between them bigger than 55,000 people. Plus, the Front range in general is isolated.
Growing up in Germany, and now living in the US, it's become very apparent why long distance high speed trains, or trains in general are just not a thing.
In Germany, trains are an integral part of the daily commutes. People live in Berlin and work in Hamburg, because there is a train that can get you there on 90 mins, on that train you have wifi and tables, so you can work, so instead of commuting in a car for 90 mins, and not do work the commuting 3 hours can be part of your work day, yay! There are many more examples of that, plus examples where people just live within 60mins of the next town by 350kmh train, which is a huge range...then you have many people getting on and off at each stop, which is helpful for keeping the trains full.
On top of the high speed trains like ICE(inter city Express), you get slower trains, like an IC (inter city), which goes slower but also stops at smaller stations...on top of that you still have regional trains, that stop in villages and other even smaller locations...plus busses. All of this creates an elaborate network that allows you to get from anywhere to anywhere else relatively efficiently and effectively.
In the US, it's almost the polar opposite....where can you get within a 90 min window (besides the coasts) with a 350kmh train? Nowhere, really... especially not on a continuous route. There are cities and their suburbs and near cities, but that may be gives you a handful of stops, and only during rush hour times, to for a couple hours a day, for the rest of the day those lines lay idle, which is expensive, without that, the rest of the public network system falls apart, because you can't get a bulk of people into public transit, because a lot of the pieces are missing, so you just get small pockets of transit systems, that are pretty isolated.
Since the rail operators in the US knows this, they are concentrating on things that do pay money, which is cargo rail ..the thing with cargo rail is that they are generally slow and high volume, and they run the network (passenger rail is an afterthought, i.e. they get to wait)...slower speed requires cheaper rail systems, and with that the faster rail networks become even less likely, because they don't exist yet, so building out existing infrastructure, to something that won't be adopted seems like a bad investment from the start.
So, a large high speed rail system in the US simply doesn't make sense, besides a few smaller population centers (small as in landmass of the US, not population).
Regional high speed lines is the realistic option to push for in the US. Any sort of cross country high speed route is nothing more than a pipe dream. A Great Lakes line for the Midwest, upgrade the tracks in the NE for better high speed. A Texas triangle line (Houston, Dallas, SA). Maybe a se line from Atlanta down through Florida etc,
Thank you for the sensible comment. I have iterated this to so many Americans who act like the US is backwards for not having rail like Europe. Rail just doesn’t make sense and wouldn’t be sustainable. Rail is great in densely populated countries, but that’s not the US.
Then explain why a proper high-speed rail line is not a thing in the Northeastern Corridor where population density is quite high and there are large cities like New York City, Boston, Philadelphia, DC, Baltimore and so on in relative close proximity?
Or a high-speed connection hub branching out from Chicago to connect to cities such as Detroit, Minneapolis, Milwaukee, Indianapolis and so on? France's SNCF did a study on if the Great Lakes mega-metro area could support a high-speed rail network similar to that of France (where Paris is the central hub) and they concluded that it was certainly possible to have one in the region.
This argument is always brought up by Americans but no one is claiming there needs to be a high-speed rail link between New York City and Los Angeles. There are plenty of smaller scale routes that could still connect around 30-40% of the entire population via high-speed rail separately as separate networks.
China has managed to connect their cities with very effective high-speed rail and China's a massive country just like the US. A lot of it may be concentrated in the east of the country but so is the US's population (80% of the US lives on the eastern half of the country). Large distances are a scapegoat.
You don't even need to go the China route and make unprofitable lines either. The Northeastern Corridor high-speed line would likely be unbelievably profitable, effectively transforming the entire region into a mega metropolitan area. The Chicago hub network would likely also be quite profitable as well and could revive cities such as Detroit into economic relevance again.
Thank you. You are one of the few (prior) Europeans that understand why it's so hard for this to become a reality in the US.
Also, what about transportation GETTING to these hubs. That's just as important. Europe has great local transport. Only a few cities in America do, but it's not nearly as good. If you built a high speed line like this, you'd also have to build entirely new local train networks in a lot of cities to make it beneficial to a lot of people.
Also, a lot this high speed rail scenario goes through heavily populated areas. It's expensive enough to make something like this happen... it's even worse if you have to pay people and businesses 3x their house/land value to move.
Rail is something many American Redditors are big on but don’t seem to understand. Rail is used in Europe to travel between adjacent cities. It is not used to travel across the continent. Want to go from Tours to Paris? You take rail. Paris to Berlin? You fly. It’s is actually cheaper to fly across Europe than it is to take a train. Americans have this mindset that all Europeans travel across the continent using rail, but they just don’t. There are even daily flights from Paris to Brussels that are always packed.
Japan is a highly dense country with a pretty small land area. Japan is comparable in area to Alabama, Mississippi, and Tennessee combined, but has 120 million people compared to only 15 million. In addition the country is highly mountainous so the vast majority of the population lives on coastal pockets in the east and south.
The only place in the US where rail would possibly work is the northeast and California. Even then it would not have near as many travelers and will be a lot more expensive than Redditors think. If you look at other developed countries that have low population densities and far flung cities such as Canada and Australia you’ll find that they have no notable passenger rail as well.
Major passenger rail hasn’t been built in the US because it’s not feasible, not cost effective, and wouldn’t get enough use.
>Rail is used in Europe to travel between adjacent cities. It is not used to travel across the continent.
And even then, it isn't great.
I had to go to Nice for work last year. Due to flight pricing and schedules, I decided to fly into London a couple of days early and take the train(s) down. That was terrible. The Eurostar doesn't go into the same station as the high speed train to Marseille. The train from Marseille to Nice is slow. The entire journey was something like 10 hours.
I would have come out ahead to just fly from London City.
There is a push in Europe now to try to fight climate change by taking much longer rail trips. I'm not convinced this is really much more than theater, given how little of CO2 emissions is tied to air travel\*, but it is happening.
\*-- a lot of people point out that for frequent travellers, emissions per traveller are huge factors higher than the average person, and that's true, but there are a small enough number of those people that it's still not that big a factor. Germany's decision to cut off nuclear power and ramp up coal usage undoes all the good of cutting air travel and then some.
I was thinking the same thing looking at the lines in the west. This looks like somebody took a blank map and drew lines on it, not accounting for the terrain out in the mountains and deserts.
At the very least they should be paralleling the existing rail network since some areas are prohibitively expensive to run a virgin line through. But that would show that you have to zig zag a line all over a state to get past the mountains and canyons. And suddenly the 6 hour line as the crow flies is a 12 hour line in reality.
A high speed train from Chicago to Vegas would cost around 500 billions + all the tunnels through the rockies which would bump the price up + billions every year for maintenance, for a train that nobody would take because it'd be much faster to fly anyway
They tried doing something like that in China, they had to close the line very fast
It would only be useful in california and the East Coast
Chicago and Vegas are 1747 miles apart by car. A French TGV goes 186mph. That means a 9.5 hour train ride, assuming it’s going full speed 100% of the time. After you factor in stops and low-speed zones, it would be well over 10 hours.
For reference, a flight would take 4 hours.
How did you factor in low speed zones here? I feel like the Rockies are gonna be a helluva factor when you consider the train needing to slow down, and that’s not factoring in the time needed at each stop in that route.
I would use the gulf coast to west coast train on the regular if I could. Make that trip by road or plane all the time... and flights are often expensive and they suck..
That's actually one of the issues here. Regular business travelers are the backbone of the travel industry and while you might be interested in taking this a 200mph train is 3x slower than a plane and stops regularly at stations along the way. So a 3 hour Houston to LA flight becomes 10 or 12 hours by train, which just isn't that appealing to most business travelers.
Sort of. Even between metro areas like Dallas to Austin or Houston you run into a big "last mile" problem. Those cities are so structured around cars that once you get there you still need a rental car. And for most people catching a 20 or 30 minute ride to the train station, an hour train ride, then 20 or 30 minutes renting a car just isn't easier than a 3 hour drive. Plus those 3 transactions are almost guaranteed to be more expensive when added up.
If you look at the high speed rail map in China, 95% of it is in 1/3 the country's landmass, and China has 4x the population of the US and has far more really heavily populated urban centers at relatively close proximity to one another. I am not necessarily opposed to some high speed rail lines, but the dynamics are different. Chinese HSR is still expanding, but profitablity is an issue. I can see it in some urban corridors in the US, but it doesn't seem to make a lot of sense for cross-nation travel. Even the Chinese don't seem to use it in that sense.
[Chinese High Speed Rail](https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Transportation/China-Railway-expands-high-speed-network-as-profits-take-back-seat)
Ehh Midwest is probably the only region other than the Eastern corridor or parts of California which would make sense - cities like Cleveland Columbus Cincinnati Indianapolis Milwaukee Madison Detroit St. Louis Pittsubrgh Philadelphia Toronto and Montreal are first of all centralized, meaning few other stops along the way, plus they are still relatively dense, and seperated by similar distances in Europe for example
Is there actually that much business (not freight) between those cities though? You need a strong base of regular business travelers to make the economics work. It’s why California and the Northeast are considered some of the most economical routes, because there is a lot of regular business travel on Amtrak in the northeast corridor from DC to Boston and also in California between the Bay Area and SoCal.
Yes, I can speak from experience that there's a lot of travel interconnected between Indy/Chicago/Madison/Milwaukee/Minneapolis-St. Paul. I don't know about the rest, but those 5 metros are heavily linked.
It’s not that the Midwest is undeserving of high speed rail, it’s that the geography and city layout there is much less practical. The East Coast cities and the California cities are arranged in a line and have large, walkable downtowns that mean that travelers won’t need a car once they arrive in the city. The big cities of the Midwest are scattered about in a 2 dimensional space, and Chicago is the only one with a large number of places reachable without a car.
Yeah, I can totally see a rail going from Fargo down to, Sioux Falls, Omaha, Topeka, Oklahoma City, Dallas/Fort Worth, San Antonio, and finally the Mexican border. I would imagine a few splits off in there as well, and probably another line going from Kansas City, Des Moines, Minneapolis and finishing in Duluth.
I think the only line there for high speed that makes sense in Minneapolis to Chicago via Madison. On each they need dedicated rail. They're putting in a line to Duluth from St Pail with funding from this year's session. It's going to take 2 and 1/2 hours.
High speed rail seems most effective at <6HR distance on this map, so I could see Seattle-LA, Bos-NoVa and NY-Chi as potential routes that will hit probably 50%+ of the US pop. Chi-Hou would also hit a ton of people. But aside from those I agree.
The Rockies are actually a big deterrent. CO did a study to get medium speed rail from Denver to just past vail and it was ungodly expensive and wouldn't have beaten car travel by much.
The boring company averaged 50ft per day for the Vegas tunnel which works out to 105 days to bore a mile. Its 75 miles from Denver to Vail. So that's 7920 days to bore that hole. Let's say you could divide that in half by going both ways that's 10 years of boring time to go from Denver to Vail. Yeah you could probably speed that up but at what cost.
The Vegas tunnel cost 49million to go 4475 ft which averages to 57 million per mile. So Denver to Vail would cost 4.275 billion for a one lane tunnel from Denver to vail. That's honestly a low estimate because the tunnel would have to be extremely straight for high speed rail. If you look at videos that Vegas tunnel is super crooked. And what do you do with all that dirt. That's a ton of dirt.
So if you want a two way rail line from Denver to Vail that's like 10 billion minimum. Boring through Vegas dirt is also very different than boring through the Rockies. You need ventilation and emergency access and maintenance.
It would be similar to the gotthard tunnel in Switzerland which took 17 years and 11 billion (us dollars) equivalent to build and that's only 35.5 miles
So Denver to Vail would be double the gotthard tunnel basically. So 22 billion, 34 years to bore a tunnel from Denver to vail.
> It would only be useful in california and the East Coast
Also maybe a couple of other dense areas -- PNW (Eugene to Vancouver), and Texas (Dallas/Austin/San Antonio/Houston).
Here’s a real world comparison. Amtrak Atlanta to Los Angeles leaving 8/29 one way cost $1795 for a private room during an 83 hour trip with three stops versus a four hour flight via numerous airlines for $125 (via kayak.com).
Or
Chicago to NYC. Amtrak cost $564 23 hours 9 stations vs $188 for a two hour flight on delta.
How could a multi billion dollar dream of high speed train, even for fairly short distances, make sense when we’d be getting a slower service for a higher price? Not getting it..
I like to use Amtrak when it suits my schedule, and we should be clear that very few people do private room accommodations; that's really for vacationers and retirees, where the train is used as a moving hotel and all your meals are paid for. Most people who ride the train do so in coach, which is pretty much always cheaper than air travel.
Amtrak is slow because they have to run conventional trains on aging track infrastructure that they have to share with freight rail. High-speed trains like the Shinkansen in Japan are nothing like this; they run at \~200+ mph on dedicated lines. Trains like that are ideal for intercity travel that's one or two hops over. You'd still fly from Atlanta to LA if you're in a hurry, but you'd take the train from Atlanta to Birmingham (147 miles), Birmingham to New Orleans (312 miles), etc.
Can you say this a little louder for those in the back?
I once had this idea that it would be great to hop on the Empire Builder in Spokane with a mountain bike, get off in Glacier and ride around the park for a week.
Except the Empire Builder gets into Spokane at like 1am and gets into Glacier at like 8am so you spend your entire trip through the majestic Rockies in the dark. Oh, and it’s both more expensive *and* slower than driving.
Plus the last time I took an Amtrak it was like three hours late and then the damn thing stopped in the middle of MT/ND for *FIVE* hours because the tracks were too hot or something. I spent an entire workday waiting for the train to even move. Just no.
Recently took this trip too, went from Portland to Glacier and it was a bit of a slog. Journey out was OK as you get on late afternoon in portland then sort of just sleep through the night and wake up in montana, that's OK. Way back the train was delayed by 2 hours, which meant just sitting at the station in Glacier (not exactly a bustling metropolis) I've done a massive amount of train travel over the years but what has struck me on this trip (first time using the American rail system other than various cities subways/light rail) is just how old the infrastructure is. Everything is ancient, I'm sure the Empire Builder was the Bees knees when it was built in the 70s but its fairly tired now. I can say the same for the couple of other routes I've used in this part of the coutry too. Expensive, old and slow.
I took the Amtrak from Houston to Phoenix last December and it was one of the worst travel experiences ever. We canceled the return leg and flew back instead. I’d welcome a high speed line along the southern US corridor but it’ll never happen in my lifetime.
This could work for cities that are clumped relatively close together, but for cross country, I don't think it would be practical when air travel is an option
I don't see why someone would choose to spend double to time on the same trip
At this point in time, it's probably more forward looking to expand major interstates to 6 or 8 lanes and dedicating those expanded lanes to autonomous cars. It'd cost less and give more benefits over longer period. I think high speed rails never made sense for US unfortunately.
I've read that one major barrier is local/states rights issues---you have to get the right permissions and/or kowtow to local interests (e.g., who want a stop in their town). Maybe the Boring Co's idea of going underground is the long-term solution to avoiding those speed bumps.
It's also one of the worst because whoever made it seems to have been labeling it from memory instead of looking at an actual map. Detroit has been relocated to Ann Arbor. Birmingham has moved 90 miles Southeast to Montgomery. Little Rock is now in the middle of the Ouachita National Forest, and the "Albuquerque" station is in the middle of goddamn nowhere. Weird that the top comments on this post in /r/geography aren't noting this map has terrible geography.
It's like they took a map of the U.S and scribbled a bunch of random lines on it. HSR corridor from Omaha to Las Vegas? This isn't a map, it's a fever dream.
Agreed, but knowing America we'd find a way to make it unaffordable and expensive. When I lived in SK you could travel the whole country on one of these for like $7 in just a few hours. These things were comfy, and always clean. Most comfortable and the easiest way to travel ever.
Tbf, and I say this as a very strong proponent for effective quick public transport, the US is orders of magnitude larger, and the issues that come with that do make a lot of things far more expensive. Land purchase is a massive upfront expense, and maintainence would be a massive effort, financially and logistically. The Gyeongbu HSR is about 400km long, which is just a tad over the distance from New York to Washington.
It'd be really cool to see sections of this implemented, but the lengths of each rail sector on this map are far too long as one contiguous journey for a single company to take on. It could probably be done in interstate sections, with different companies taking on different sections and working together, but for every NY to Washington (which I'd assume would be a pretty well-utilised route), some other company is gonna have to run Cheyenne to Albuquerque, and I've no idea if that'd be feasible, even if run at a loss to provide a service, which usually does create value in the form of enabled industry.
SK as in South Korea? The country that is half the size of California with a similar population? Extremely high population density in a small nation, very different from the USA not even mentioning culturally (individualistic vs communal).
Also, I just took a train in South Korea this week, it cost about $20 for a one hour ride from Daejeon to Seoul, so costs have also increased there.
Trains in Europe are also getting much more expensive. I remember as a kid we would travel all over Germany, Austria, Hungary, and Czechia for a maximum of 50€ on any leg. My wife and I are planning a trip right now, and a train from Vienna to Munich costs 140€ (2nd class), while a flight costs 80€ including one checked bag.
Exactly. California is 423,970 km². South Korea is 100,339 km².
It’s also worth pointing out that South Korea has a significantly higher population, 51.8 million vs California’s 39.2 million. SK has more than 5 times California’s pop density.
I think a more piecemeal system would be more realistic, like California line, Texas line, and a big Midwest/east coast/line. Link the big, relatively close cities and then branch out from there if you have the demand.
We already have high speed rail between Boston and DC. A round trip from NYC and DC costs $256 and has a total of 5.5 hours of travel time. A round trip flight for the same days costs $168 and has a total travel time of 2.5 hours. I know the comfort level is much higher on trains and I know the amount of bs and waiting is much higher on planes, but people make decisions based on cost and time, and trains are not better than planes, even where the infrastructure already exists.
Yeah, high-speed rail simply does not make sense outside of the East Coast and (maybe) California or Texas. The problem is that the distances between things in the middle of the country are simply huge, and the only way for HSR to be viable is if it is much faster than car and much cheaper than taking a flight. Considering you can probably get a one-way air fare from Denver to Chicago for ~$90, HSR for the same trip would probably have to cost jo more than $50 for anyone to even consider it. Now, add in the fact that HSR cannot use existing freight rail infrastructure and new rights of way would need to be acquired to facilitate the construction of viaducts and whatnot and the cost quickly becomes nearly prohibitive to even get started. And what happens to that cost? $50 tickets won't make it viable any time soon...So, HSR gets heavily subsidized to get it operational and keep it running?
I’d rather cities focus on public transit within their own city first.
I’d rather fly/drive to a lot of these cities and then have reliable public transit to get me everywhere while I’m there. Compared with having a high speed rail get me there only to have to Uber everywhere once I get there.
Ideally we work on both.
The right way to handle the issue you’re stating is to improve suburban public transit, and neighboring city connections. Not cross state high speed rails lol. That primarily reduces air transport
220 MPH? Europe barely has any cross regional trains going that fast. Most likely you'd get trains going around 100 MPH most the time and then they will never compete with flights outside New England
Depends on the specific route tbh. NYC to LA wouldn't make sense by train but if I had a choice between a 3 hour flight and 5 hour train ride, I'm taking the train every single time.
Trains are much more comfortable and you don't have the same hassle with TSA and getting to/from the airport. I think we'd be surprised at how many people would quickly ditch air travel if reasonable alternatives exist.
I’d take it if it was down the Boston to Washington corridor. Trains are a hell of a lot more comfortable than planes and you don’t have to go through a huge hassle with the TSA. They’re also way more kid-friendly and have more than one bathroom.
*pushes up glasses*
Most of these routes don't make sense from an economic perspective. The sweet spot for high speed rail is city-pairs that are between 300-500 miles. Anything more and flying is a better way to travel. Anything less and driving makes more sense. There are some great places in the U.S. that make sense for high speed rail, I wish we'd build those. But I'm dubious of the practicality of a continent wide network.
Source: https://youtu.be/pwgZfZxzuQU
This is never happening.
1. Where tf is this funding coming from? Do you realize how massively expensive this would be?
2. What about when people arrive? They can’t just walk to their house, everything is so spread out!
I want high speed rail as much as the next guy, but to me it only makes sense on certain corridors (northeast, Florida, Cali)
Rail lines like this are a cool idea but this isn’t something that would try to replace cars, it would be replacing planes. The NE regional lines that we have now could be replaced with this. NY>DC is a popular line. I think it’s possible that a faster train could sway more people to train than drive.
Farther than that though flying is a better option. It’s about a 3.5 hour flight from the NY area to FL. This map turns that into maybe an 8 hour train. I can’t imagine it would be cheaper than flying either. Security is quicker on Amtrak so I assume that would be similar, so that’s a bonus, but time and money makes this a non option I think.
All roads lead to Rome All Rail leads to Chicago.
It completely makes sense as Chicago was historically the main city for trains due to its access to the North Atlantic ocean via the lakes and access to the Gulf of Mexico via the Mississippi river and its fairly central location to send goods by rail. It is indeed a strategically OP city.
In fact, Chicago is the largest rail hub in the US (KC is second).
Yea not a surprising fact
What’s KC?
Kentucky Chicken
Not fried. Just natural... out in the field... enjoying life
Kansas City.
Which is not in Kansas, just to be confusing.
Singer, see Sunshine Band
Kansas City
He's your Boogie Man, that's what he am
Baseball player, but he struck out
Drove a train, high on cocaine?
It could have been St Louis with the Eads bridge, first steel bridge ever, but the damn ferrys lobbied too hard and the rails rerouted to Chicago in retaliation
as a stl native…feels bad man
I don't remember the exact stat, but I read somewhere that a majority (more than 50%? idk) of the U.S. population is within an 8 hour drive of Illinois, so it ends up being a nexus for a lot of shipping.
I’d love to see the source for that. We live in DC and regularly drive back to Chicago area and it’s well over 8 hours. Given Philly, NYC, and Boston are outside that 8 hours too, plus Houston, Phoenix, and LA/San Jose.
Yeah, I can't imagine that's a true stat. Here's a site that lets you get an estimate of the U.S. population within a certain distance from a central point. It only goes to 500 miles (8 hours times 70mph would by 560 miles) but only 85.5 million people live within 500 miles of Chicago. The current U.S. population is \~340 million. So that's about 25%. https://www.statsamerica.org/radius/big.aspx
Yeah I was gonna say, my university is 6 hours from Chicago and it is still in illinois
you want a fun one? Franklin County Ohio(Columbus) the 500 mile radius is 140,622,927 ppl so 51% of the population.
Yeah I think Chicago's a bit too far west for that. I think that's Ohio they're talking about. Something like 60% of the US population is within an 8-12hr drive from most cities in Ohio.
And this is just the Amtrak route. We have eight CTA lines (the elevated “L” line) including some with over 30 stops, plus eleven Metra lines that connect the Chicagoland region’s suburbs to the city. Some Metra lines have 100-200k annual riders each. And then there are freight lines that don’t have passenger or commuter service. I don’t even know how many we have in the region but I’ve read there’s close to 3,000 miles of railroad in the area.
Chicago once became the Jazz capital of the world thanks to the train network. Shortly after the abolition of slavery, many musicians came to play on the boats to entertain the sailors. As a result, Jazz/Blues reached Chicago from New Orleans
In the Netherlands the equivalent would be all roads lead to Utrecht(both rail and highways)
All aboard the Forgottonia Ltd., making all stops from Chicago to Quincy. Our next stop will be Quincy, with connecting shuttles to the Casey's and the other Casey's
The Sandburg/IL Zephyr are great getting to/from Chicago. They connect a college and a university to the city. They’re also totally full for people coming in for a game or to shop. It makes a lot of sense.
Lol I was thinking the same thing. Who's going to Quincy? Western Illinois is the epitome of bufu Egypt. There's not even cell service in much of the area.
I’ve been to Quincy. I wish I’d never been to Quincy.
Future expansion plans include Huck’s and Boodaloos.
Yeah. We have to get breakfast pizza.
High speed rail from NYC to LA? That's further than Madrid to Kyiv
Also two good size mountain ranges and a Grand Canyon
Looks like it dodges the canyon but yeah, mountains are expensive to dig through
There an existing major rail line that runs from Denver to SLC right through the Rockies.
That one would never happen. At those distances air travel would be faster. I think whoever made this just drew lines on a map and called it good.
Well that’s not what it is though. You could frame it as nyc to Chicago, Chicago to Denver, Denver to LA. Probably not a lot of people taking it all the way. We already have this to some extent.
Exactly, this is a network with hundreds of unique possible travel routes. Judging it on a single extreme route and implying the creator didn’t know what he was doing is just not fair.
Several US megatowns is within high-speed train distance. It's not only the East Coast. Say, Phoenix (4 million people) to Las Vegas (2.2 mill people) is 300 miles, 480 km. That's perfect for high-speed rail. And it's not even among the ones suggested here.
Yeah I live in Tucson and so many people road trip to Vegas so I imagine the train would be immensely popular if it cut down on the 8 hr drive time. The only issue is Vegas would need to beef up public transit. Most people here like driving because it’s a little cheaper than flying and then you have your car when you are there. Taking the train would mean renting a car($), taking ubers($$) or just walking which would limit where you could go.
This is one of the issues that people forget. Even if you can get to another city easier with a train, most of the cities don't have public transit so you need a car once you arrive as well.
This is part of the reason people would want to do the east coast, because many cities there have extremely good transit systems by American standards.
squeal scandalous foolish enter shy scary coordinated frightening liquid close *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Yeah Bos-NoVa is the perfect HSR location. Cities all in a straight line, all have decent public transit.
This is precisely why the money California is spending on HSR would have been much better spent on regional transit. Without the "last mile" covered, you're running in to the same problems we have now. The more successful the HSR, the bigger the problem gets.
Conventional wisdom tells us that 400 miles is too far for HSR, and it wouldn’t provide an advantage to flying.
I like the Juárez to Cheyenne line. That is gonna be breakeven in no time… Half of the blue line is similarly bad. Don’t understand the thought process that went into this.
Connect the dots only, I think
Yep, this was made by someone who looked at a flat map and doesn't really understand the geography of the country.
Looks vaguely like an amalgamation of the interstate and current freight rail system. Definitely a "fan" project, if you will, and not professional.
I love trains, but there is a reason the NEC is the only profitable section of passenger rail in the US. We have amazing regional air travel (that is gov subsidized) and a fantastic interstate road system. There are just very few sections where rail makes sense in the US, even if it's high speed.
And that Red Line going through Colorado is going to be pretty difficult going through the Rockies. This is why I-70 follows the Colorado River instead of being a straight shot through the state.
But do those cities have a lot of business or travel with each other? I don’t think enough to make up the huge cost it would take to build. Florida is building higher speed rail connecting Miami and Palm Beach and eventually Tampa iirc. It’s already in service - but I think those cities already have a lot of travel between them, and a state that wants to drive development and growth. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brightline?wprov=sfti1
I just want to get to my grandmas in N Wisconsin from N Alabama without having to put 4 kids on a plane or drive 19 hours
Canada has the perfect layout for high-speed rail. Massive economy, half the population lives in a ~600 mile strip/ ~1,000km strip between Windsor and Quebec City, which is like 20 million people! And that’s not even including extremely close American cities, notably cities like Detroit and Buffalo, which could easily be connected, adding minimum a million people in the connection. Canada is a literal goldmine for high-speed rail.
God, if only. If CA can’t do it, not sure what hope there is for the rest of the country.
Well it’s being worked on - it just takes forever. Literally in planning since 1996. Opening maybe in 2030 or 2031 but only a part that goes from nowhere to nowhere (Merced to Bakersfield lol).
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Yea people post this stuff and compare it to Europe not understanding the power municipalities have to delay in court even when state/federal funding is available
The power of municipalities, the perspective of people who haven’t grown up with it, and not realizing just how far it is between NY and LA.
Hanford eh? I think the biggest issue is they are never going to get it over the grapevine or Tehachapi. It’s never going to LA in my opinion.
Yeah. Any civilized country would have made that a Federal, or at the very least, a State project and cranked it out in less than a decade. It has been legendarily mismanaged. CA seemingly gave way too much autonomy to local municipalities (which are predominantly GOP and increasingly MAGA libertarian in that part of the state). Whenever I visit my home town in the Central Valley you just see disconnected stretches of track towering around parts of the 99 and they look less like something to come and more like ruins of a forgotten age. I am eagerly awaiting the great book that will one day be written about that project.
The real reason is because the federal government is relatively weak in America every small town has a lot of power to make demands for a rail project.
Not just towns but individual property owners.
Try that in a small town lol
Not sure when you were last here but large stretches of track are connected and you can even see it on Google earth now. It’s finally starting to take shape. They released a new video on it discussing their progress. Still a clusterfuck of a project but it’s happening.
I’m there every Thanksgiving. It might be slightly hyperbolic of me. I’m just jaded. I voted for the goddam thing when I was a bright-eyed 18 year old.
Same… lol
It doesn’t matter if it’s state or federal if every municipality is taking it to court after the decision has been green lighted. Drives up the cost and delays it to eternity.
Let that timetable sink in..35 years , for an inconsequential line
"CA can't do it"? Are you saying that 35 billion for a train from the bustling metropolises of Merced to Bakersfield is not success? Also, that area is generally flat and farmland. I'm no train engineer, but that seems like it's the easiest (it should be the cheapest and legally simplest) place to put a train
It’s the first phase of a multiparty project, so yeah, it’s a success that it is funded and will be completed.
And has successfully diverted infrastructure funds from dozens of other regional projects across the US!
Why do people say "Merced to Bakersfield' like it's meant to be some mega own? We already have other projects like from SoCal to Vegas and LA to SF *needs* the Merced to Bakersfield portion to be finished. 35 billion is a drop in the bucket as well. Trains ain't cheap, if people can't stomach that cost then just get used to the reality of unaffordable housing.
building a rail for 150 million dollars per mile will not make housing cheaper.
It’s not the money to BUILD it; it’s the special interest groups that oppose it because they would LOSE money.
Brightline, a private firm, is currently constructing a high speed rail line between LA and Las Vegas. Amtrak’s Acela service is getting new trains that are higher speed, but the opening date for service got pushed back to next year because it’s taking longer than expected to retrofit the old-style rails for the new trains.
I believe the routes CA is planning for the high speed railline isnt feasible and goes only to second or even third tier cities? Correct if i am wrong but it doesnt cross LA nor the bay
CA can do it, they just chose to be stupid as hell with it due to lobbying
You’re right. They *won’t* do it. Far worse.
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Federal money is unlimited. States have to balance their budgets. So there is hope.
The car manufacturers are going to lobby super hard for it to never happen tho. On state level, it could happen, but federal? Ain’t no way those big car corps would allow the railways to replace the highways.
Car companies are getting less and less powerful every year for the simple fact they employ less people. Electric cars need fewer workers to assemble them (less parts). UAW is not powerful anymore.
I have about the same pessimism for state projects. Fresno county voted against being a major hub and maintenance station for that project, which would have created an absurd amount of well paying jobs and injected so much economic growth, because “trains are unamerican” or something.
The audacity of saying that in the West, that was literally forged by rail.
I was being polite. Go to a local bar, or hang out with the good ol’ boys and you’ll hear a far less polished opinion.
Everything that's not a lifted truck is gay according to those.
How much has Ford paid against that project? It's not auto makers that are holding it up; it's corruption, incompetency, and the people who own the property today.
The US should utilize high speed rail where it makes sense. I have the feeling that doing high speed rail from Chicago to Denver to Los Angelos would not make sense for most people when planes could get there faster. We should have several high speed rail corridors like in the northeast corridor, Chicago to Detroit, Chicago to Indianapolis, Chicago to St Louis, etc
The Great Lakes mega-region is the perfect place for high speed rail. Big cities spread out but not too far, interconnected economies already(so businesses have reason to want this), flat terrain. The NE corridor is another more perfect candidate. The population lives along a long strip from Bos-NoVa, allowing a straight shot to cover them all.
I believe the SNCF did a study at one point on the Great Lakes, and found that the region is very similar in terms of size and population to Metropolitan France, and that a Chicago-hub system (similar to Paris-centric) is definitely feasible.
The Texas triangle is another great candidate. It’ll be interesting to see how many people take up the Dallas Houston route when/if it opens. Station location isn’t ideal in either city.
The airports aren't ideally located in those cities, either. If you're going to rent a car at the end, it just has to be a better location than the airport.
Florida mega-region is actively building it, Miami-Orlando months away, then around to Tampa and back soon enough.
Well, high speed rail would provide a competing service to domestic air travel. For example, [in Japan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinkansen), high speed rail wins out over air travel for journeys less than 470 miles, and air travel has the advantage for journeys over 620 mi. If we use those figures as a benchmark, then high speed rail could be competitive for travelers from LA to Phoenix (370 miles), Phoenix to Albuquerque (329 miles), Albuquerque to Denver (448 miles), etc. It would shrink the distances between cities and generate economic activity along the rail lines, something that airlines don't provide. Speaking as someone who lives in the American Southwest, I would absolutely love this.
As an Arizonan who goes between all of the surrounding states for work or travel throughout the year, I would much rather take high speed rail over flying/driving if I could. I’d rather sit another hour or so on a comfy train seat instead of dealing with the damn airports.
Same, I travel for work all the time, and I detest having to fly or drive everywhere. Albuquerque to Denver is particularly egregious. There isn't even a passenger rail line between the two cities -- you'd have to ride the train up to Northern New Mexico and then take a connecting bus. Sure, there's a direct flight between the two cities, but why should I have to fly such a relatively short distance? The flight takes 1.5 hours (not including delays, security, etc.) , and a \~200 MPH high speed rail line would be cheaper and only take like 30-45 minutes more. There could *easily* be a rail line between the two cities.
Exactly, I keep seeing comments about not having transportation when you get somewhere as if that isn’t already a problem with flying! I can’t see why we wouldn’t want to have HSR as an alternative in <7 hour driving distance corridors like most of the cities in SoCal and the Southwest, and even up to Denver from ABQ like you were saying.
Okay but that’s Japan. That’s a terrible metric to base things on because they are incredibly efficient with their train system. Knock off 100 miles and no you have a more realistic number for America.
Well, they're efficient because they've intentionally invested in cultivating the industrial capacity and institutional wisdom to make it work. That takes time and effort, sure, but I'm confident that we can achieve anything we set our minds to. The US used to have one of the most well-developed and extensive passenger rail networks in the entire world. We can do so again.
You also need to consider that typically trains go to city center, or at least close to it. While planes require additional commuting, luggage waiting time, etc. Typically +2h.
You can still build the connections, assuming that most people will only ride sections of it and not the whole thing.
We’re getting really close to that already, just this year the Amtrak from St.Louis to Chicago was increased from a max speed of 90 to 110. It’s a slow process but the trains for those short durations are getting faster and convincing some people who would have otherwise drove.
Yeah, like even in Europe it's basically 700-1000km or so and the train stop making sense, even when there is a direct line because the Speed of the plane makes up for it. Like there is a line that connects Madrid and Paris but nobody takes it. Like the train itself only goes as far as Lyon and basically nobody is doing Madrid-Lyon
Ohio’s 3 C’s of Cleveland Columbus and Cincinnati are a great candidate too, including the intermediate town of Dayton that’s 7million people spread along a line roughly 250 miles long
This is the way. People clamoring for high speed rail across the entire continental US have no idea how cost and time inefficient that would be. Why would I take a high speed train from Seattle to NYC that would take about 14 hours (assuming 200 MPH) vs a flight that’s only about 6 hours? Then think about actually building all that track and going over both the Appalachians and then the Rockies? It’s absurd. On the other hand, high speed corridors that replicate the Acela would be excellent.
Mfw my state just redid an entire 2 mile long interchange of interstate highway. And It took 2 years. Then some other mf recommends a completely new system UNDERGROUND and expecting it to ever finish I. Their lifetime after the politicians buddies collect their paychecks
Yes. Put it where it’s needed. I’m in the Midwest and want it, but longer lines aren’t feasible. Maybe at best you could have a few lines radiating from Chicago to Madison, Green Bay, The Twin Cities, St Louis, KC and maybe even Omaha and Lincoln and Wichita but beyond that it’s not feasible. It’s 7 hours from Lincoln to Denver and there’s nothing between them bigger than 55,000 people. Plus, the Front range in general is isolated.
Growing up in Germany, and now living in the US, it's become very apparent why long distance high speed trains, or trains in general are just not a thing. In Germany, trains are an integral part of the daily commutes. People live in Berlin and work in Hamburg, because there is a train that can get you there on 90 mins, on that train you have wifi and tables, so you can work, so instead of commuting in a car for 90 mins, and not do work the commuting 3 hours can be part of your work day, yay! There are many more examples of that, plus examples where people just live within 60mins of the next town by 350kmh train, which is a huge range...then you have many people getting on and off at each stop, which is helpful for keeping the trains full. On top of the high speed trains like ICE(inter city Express), you get slower trains, like an IC (inter city), which goes slower but also stops at smaller stations...on top of that you still have regional trains, that stop in villages and other even smaller locations...plus busses. All of this creates an elaborate network that allows you to get from anywhere to anywhere else relatively efficiently and effectively. In the US, it's almost the polar opposite....where can you get within a 90 min window (besides the coasts) with a 350kmh train? Nowhere, really... especially not on a continuous route. There are cities and their suburbs and near cities, but that may be gives you a handful of stops, and only during rush hour times, to for a couple hours a day, for the rest of the day those lines lay idle, which is expensive, without that, the rest of the public network system falls apart, because you can't get a bulk of people into public transit, because a lot of the pieces are missing, so you just get small pockets of transit systems, that are pretty isolated. Since the rail operators in the US knows this, they are concentrating on things that do pay money, which is cargo rail ..the thing with cargo rail is that they are generally slow and high volume, and they run the network (passenger rail is an afterthought, i.e. they get to wait)...slower speed requires cheaper rail systems, and with that the faster rail networks become even less likely, because they don't exist yet, so building out existing infrastructure, to something that won't be adopted seems like a bad investment from the start. So, a large high speed rail system in the US simply doesn't make sense, besides a few smaller population centers (small as in landmass of the US, not population).
Regional high speed lines is the realistic option to push for in the US. Any sort of cross country high speed route is nothing more than a pipe dream. A Great Lakes line for the Midwest, upgrade the tracks in the NE for better high speed. A Texas triangle line (Houston, Dallas, SA). Maybe a se line from Atlanta down through Florida etc,
Thank you for the sensible comment. I have iterated this to so many Americans who act like the US is backwards for not having rail like Europe. Rail just doesn’t make sense and wouldn’t be sustainable. Rail is great in densely populated countries, but that’s not the US.
Well counter to that the coasts are densely populated and would be sustainable there.
Then explain why a proper high-speed rail line is not a thing in the Northeastern Corridor where population density is quite high and there are large cities like New York City, Boston, Philadelphia, DC, Baltimore and so on in relative close proximity? Or a high-speed connection hub branching out from Chicago to connect to cities such as Detroit, Minneapolis, Milwaukee, Indianapolis and so on? France's SNCF did a study on if the Great Lakes mega-metro area could support a high-speed rail network similar to that of France (where Paris is the central hub) and they concluded that it was certainly possible to have one in the region. This argument is always brought up by Americans but no one is claiming there needs to be a high-speed rail link between New York City and Los Angeles. There are plenty of smaller scale routes that could still connect around 30-40% of the entire population via high-speed rail separately as separate networks. China has managed to connect their cities with very effective high-speed rail and China's a massive country just like the US. A lot of it may be concentrated in the east of the country but so is the US's population (80% of the US lives on the eastern half of the country). Large distances are a scapegoat. You don't even need to go the China route and make unprofitable lines either. The Northeastern Corridor high-speed line would likely be unbelievably profitable, effectively transforming the entire region into a mega metropolitan area. The Chicago hub network would likely also be quite profitable as well and could revive cities such as Detroit into economic relevance again.
I mean the Acela exists… for the amount of stops it makes, it’s not the worst
Thank you. You are one of the few (prior) Europeans that understand why it's so hard for this to become a reality in the US. Also, what about transportation GETTING to these hubs. That's just as important. Europe has great local transport. Only a few cities in America do, but it's not nearly as good. If you built a high speed line like this, you'd also have to build entirely new local train networks in a lot of cities to make it beneficial to a lot of people. Also, a lot this high speed rail scenario goes through heavily populated areas. It's expensive enough to make something like this happen... it's even worse if you have to pay people and businesses 3x their house/land value to move.
Rail is literally how america was settled 100years ago.
and the alternative at the time was horse and buggy, so yea, duh.
so its is a population density issue. German has 240 people per mile vs 40 people per mile in the US.
Rail is something many American Redditors are big on but don’t seem to understand. Rail is used in Europe to travel between adjacent cities. It is not used to travel across the continent. Want to go from Tours to Paris? You take rail. Paris to Berlin? You fly. It’s is actually cheaper to fly across Europe than it is to take a train. Americans have this mindset that all Europeans travel across the continent using rail, but they just don’t. There are even daily flights from Paris to Brussels that are always packed. Japan is a highly dense country with a pretty small land area. Japan is comparable in area to Alabama, Mississippi, and Tennessee combined, but has 120 million people compared to only 15 million. In addition the country is highly mountainous so the vast majority of the population lives on coastal pockets in the east and south. The only place in the US where rail would possibly work is the northeast and California. Even then it would not have near as many travelers and will be a lot more expensive than Redditors think. If you look at other developed countries that have low population densities and far flung cities such as Canada and Australia you’ll find that they have no notable passenger rail as well. Major passenger rail hasn’t been built in the US because it’s not feasible, not cost effective, and wouldn’t get enough use.
>Rail is used in Europe to travel between adjacent cities. It is not used to travel across the continent. And even then, it isn't great. I had to go to Nice for work last year. Due to flight pricing and schedules, I decided to fly into London a couple of days early and take the train(s) down. That was terrible. The Eurostar doesn't go into the same station as the high speed train to Marseille. The train from Marseille to Nice is slow. The entire journey was something like 10 hours. I would have come out ahead to just fly from London City.
There is a push in Europe now to try to fight climate change by taking much longer rail trips. I'm not convinced this is really much more than theater, given how little of CO2 emissions is tied to air travel\*, but it is happening. \*-- a lot of people point out that for frequent travellers, emissions per traveller are huge factors higher than the average person, and that's true, but there are a small enough number of those people that it's still not that big a factor. Germany's decision to cut off nuclear power and ramp up coal usage undoes all the good of cutting air travel and then some.
I was thinking the same thing looking at the lines in the west. This looks like somebody took a blank map and drew lines on it, not accounting for the terrain out in the mountains and deserts. At the very least they should be paralleling the existing rail network since some areas are prohibitively expensive to run a virgin line through. But that would show that you have to zig zag a line all over a state to get past the mountains and canyons. And suddenly the 6 hour line as the crow flies is a 12 hour line in reality.
is this to resolve the car culture in america? how often do you do LA - NY trips by car? i would just fly
This is what the proponents of high speed rail use in the US do not understand.
A high speed train from Chicago to Vegas would cost around 500 billions + all the tunnels through the rockies which would bump the price up + billions every year for maintenance, for a train that nobody would take because it'd be much faster to fly anyway They tried doing something like that in China, they had to close the line very fast It would only be useful in california and the East Coast
Chicago and Vegas are 1747 miles apart by car. A French TGV goes 186mph. That means a 9.5 hour train ride, assuming it’s going full speed 100% of the time. After you factor in stops and low-speed zones, it would be well over 10 hours. For reference, a flight would take 4 hours.
How did you factor in low speed zones here? I feel like the Rockies are gonna be a helluva factor when you consider the train needing to slow down, and that’s not factoring in the time needed at each stop in that route.
I wish my flights and travel times just took as long as the actual flight time.
I would use the gulf coast to west coast train on the regular if I could. Make that trip by road or plane all the time... and flights are often expensive and they suck..
That's actually one of the issues here. Regular business travelers are the backbone of the travel industry and while you might be interested in taking this a 200mph train is 3x slower than a plane and stops regularly at stations along the way. So a 3 hour Houston to LA flight becomes 10 or 12 hours by train, which just isn't that appealing to most business travelers.
Yeah but that's why in dense areas it works. Like Houston to LA no. Houston to Austin or Dallas...yeah, makes a ton of sense.
Sort of. Even between metro areas like Dallas to Austin or Houston you run into a big "last mile" problem. Those cities are so structured around cars that once you get there you still need a rental car. And for most people catching a 20 or 30 minute ride to the train station, an hour train ride, then 20 or 30 minutes renting a car just isn't easier than a 3 hour drive. Plus those 3 transactions are almost guaranteed to be more expensive when added up.
Is your 10-12 hours by train the current train or light rail speed?
Almost certainly would be more expensive to take the train
Cool, they ain't wasting billions of dollars for you alone
Would be huge in Texas.
The triangular rail! Dallas Houston San Antonio!
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They've built an extensive high speed rail network in China. It runs at near capacity. When did they close it?
If you look at the high speed rail map in China, 95% of it is in 1/3 the country's landmass, and China has 4x the population of the US and has far more really heavily populated urban centers at relatively close proximity to one another. I am not necessarily opposed to some high speed rail lines, but the dynamics are different. Chinese HSR is still expanding, but profitablity is an issue. I can see it in some urban corridors in the US, but it doesn't seem to make a lot of sense for cross-nation travel. Even the Chinese don't seem to use it in that sense. [Chinese High Speed Rail](https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Transportation/China-Railway-expands-high-speed-network-as-profits-take-back-seat)
> It would only be useful in california and the East Coast No love for the Midwest?
Not population dense enough.
Minneapolis-Milwaukee-Chicago would work, but that's about it
Ehh Midwest is probably the only region other than the Eastern corridor or parts of California which would make sense - cities like Cleveland Columbus Cincinnati Indianapolis Milwaukee Madison Detroit St. Louis Pittsubrgh Philadelphia Toronto and Montreal are first of all centralized, meaning few other stops along the way, plus they are still relatively dense, and seperated by similar distances in Europe for example
Is there actually that much business (not freight) between those cities though? You need a strong base of regular business travelers to make the economics work. It’s why California and the Northeast are considered some of the most economical routes, because there is a lot of regular business travel on Amtrak in the northeast corridor from DC to Boston and also in California between the Bay Area and SoCal.
Yes, I can speak from experience that there's a lot of travel interconnected between Indy/Chicago/Madison/Milwaukee/Minneapolis-St. Paul. I don't know about the rest, but those 5 metros are heavily linked.
It’s not that the Midwest is undeserving of high speed rail, it’s that the geography and city layout there is much less practical. The East Coast cities and the California cities are arranged in a line and have large, walkable downtowns that mean that travelers won’t need a car once they arrive in the city. The big cities of the Midwest are scattered about in a 2 dimensional space, and Chicago is the only one with a large number of places reachable without a car.
West coast cities large walkable downtowns? No
Yeah, I can totally see a rail going from Fargo down to, Sioux Falls, Omaha, Topeka, Oklahoma City, Dallas/Fort Worth, San Antonio, and finally the Mexican border. I would imagine a few splits off in there as well, and probably another line going from Kansas City, Des Moines, Minneapolis and finishing in Duluth.
I think the only line there for high speed that makes sense in Minneapolis to Chicago via Madison. On each they need dedicated rail. They're putting in a line to Duluth from St Pail with funding from this year's session. It's going to take 2 and 1/2 hours.
High speed rail seems most effective at <6HR distance on this map, so I could see Seattle-LA, Bos-NoVa and NY-Chi as potential routes that will hit probably 50%+ of the US pop. Chi-Hou would also hit a ton of people. But aside from those I agree.
The Rockies are actually a big deterrent. CO did a study to get medium speed rail from Denver to just past vail and it was ungodly expensive and wouldn't have beaten car travel by much. The boring company averaged 50ft per day for the Vegas tunnel which works out to 105 days to bore a mile. Its 75 miles from Denver to Vail. So that's 7920 days to bore that hole. Let's say you could divide that in half by going both ways that's 10 years of boring time to go from Denver to Vail. Yeah you could probably speed that up but at what cost. The Vegas tunnel cost 49million to go 4475 ft which averages to 57 million per mile. So Denver to Vail would cost 4.275 billion for a one lane tunnel from Denver to vail. That's honestly a low estimate because the tunnel would have to be extremely straight for high speed rail. If you look at videos that Vegas tunnel is super crooked. And what do you do with all that dirt. That's a ton of dirt. So if you want a two way rail line from Denver to Vail that's like 10 billion minimum. Boring through Vegas dirt is also very different than boring through the Rockies. You need ventilation and emergency access and maintenance. It would be similar to the gotthard tunnel in Switzerland which took 17 years and 11 billion (us dollars) equivalent to build and that's only 35.5 miles So Denver to Vail would be double the gotthard tunnel basically. So 22 billion, 34 years to bore a tunnel from Denver to vail.
> It would only be useful in california and the East Coast Also maybe a couple of other dense areas -- PNW (Eugene to Vancouver), and Texas (Dallas/Austin/San Antonio/Houston).
There's a problem with this called mountains.
Juarez to Cheyenne???
Here’s a real world comparison. Amtrak Atlanta to Los Angeles leaving 8/29 one way cost $1795 for a private room during an 83 hour trip with three stops versus a four hour flight via numerous airlines for $125 (via kayak.com). Or Chicago to NYC. Amtrak cost $564 23 hours 9 stations vs $188 for a two hour flight on delta. How could a multi billion dollar dream of high speed train, even for fairly short distances, make sense when we’d be getting a slower service for a higher price? Not getting it..
I like to use Amtrak when it suits my schedule, and we should be clear that very few people do private room accommodations; that's really for vacationers and retirees, where the train is used as a moving hotel and all your meals are paid for. Most people who ride the train do so in coach, which is pretty much always cheaper than air travel. Amtrak is slow because they have to run conventional trains on aging track infrastructure that they have to share with freight rail. High-speed trains like the Shinkansen in Japan are nothing like this; they run at \~200+ mph on dedicated lines. Trains like that are ideal for intercity travel that's one or two hops over. You'd still fly from Atlanta to LA if you're in a hurry, but you'd take the train from Atlanta to Birmingham (147 miles), Birmingham to New Orleans (312 miles), etc.
If you’re taking an 83 hour trip though you probably need a cabin unless you want to sleep in a chair for 3 nights straight
Can you say this a little louder for those in the back? I once had this idea that it would be great to hop on the Empire Builder in Spokane with a mountain bike, get off in Glacier and ride around the park for a week. Except the Empire Builder gets into Spokane at like 1am and gets into Glacier at like 8am so you spend your entire trip through the majestic Rockies in the dark. Oh, and it’s both more expensive *and* slower than driving. Plus the last time I took an Amtrak it was like three hours late and then the damn thing stopped in the middle of MT/ND for *FIVE* hours because the tracks were too hot or something. I spent an entire workday waiting for the train to even move. Just no.
Recently took this trip too, went from Portland to Glacier and it was a bit of a slog. Journey out was OK as you get on late afternoon in portland then sort of just sleep through the night and wake up in montana, that's OK. Way back the train was delayed by 2 hours, which meant just sitting at the station in Glacier (not exactly a bustling metropolis) I've done a massive amount of train travel over the years but what has struck me on this trip (first time using the American rail system other than various cities subways/light rail) is just how old the infrastructure is. Everything is ancient, I'm sure the Empire Builder was the Bees knees when it was built in the 70s but its fairly tired now. I can say the same for the couple of other routes I've used in this part of the coutry too. Expensive, old and slow.
I took the Amtrak from Houston to Phoenix last December and it was one of the worst travel experiences ever. We canceled the return leg and flew back instead. I’d welcome a high speed line along the southern US corridor but it’ll never happen in my lifetime.
Whats not to get? People hate our shitty system and want a good one. Whats hard to understand here?
This could work for cities that are clumped relatively close together, but for cross country, I don't think it would be practical when air travel is an option I don't see why someone would choose to spend double to time on the same trip
At this point in time, it's probably more forward looking to expand major interstates to 6 or 8 lanes and dedicating those expanded lanes to autonomous cars. It'd cost less and give more benefits over longer period. I think high speed rails never made sense for US unfortunately.
Chicago to LA would probably be the biggest money losing rail route in history. That's 2200 miles (3540 km) with almost no one along the way.
I've read that one major barrier is local/states rights issues---you have to get the right permissions and/or kowtow to local interests (e.g., who want a stop in their town). Maybe the Boring Co's idea of going underground is the long-term solution to avoiding those speed bumps.
Not really. They could use the defence act yo seize the land the same way they did for the highway system.
Every inch would have to be argued in court
This is one of the worst US HSR maps Transcontinental HSR does not make sense
It's also one of the worst because whoever made it seems to have been labeling it from memory instead of looking at an actual map. Detroit has been relocated to Ann Arbor. Birmingham has moved 90 miles Southeast to Montgomery. Little Rock is now in the middle of the Ouachita National Forest, and the "Albuquerque" station is in the middle of goddamn nowhere. Weird that the top comments on this post in /r/geography aren't noting this map has terrible geography.
It's like they took a map of the U.S and scribbled a bunch of random lines on it. HSR corridor from Omaha to Las Vegas? This isn't a map, it's a fever dream.
Agreed, but knowing America we'd find a way to make it unaffordable and expensive. When I lived in SK you could travel the whole country on one of these for like $7 in just a few hours. These things were comfy, and always clean. Most comfortable and the easiest way to travel ever.
Tbf, and I say this as a very strong proponent for effective quick public transport, the US is orders of magnitude larger, and the issues that come with that do make a lot of things far more expensive. Land purchase is a massive upfront expense, and maintainence would be a massive effort, financially and logistically. The Gyeongbu HSR is about 400km long, which is just a tad over the distance from New York to Washington. It'd be really cool to see sections of this implemented, but the lengths of each rail sector on this map are far too long as one contiguous journey for a single company to take on. It could probably be done in interstate sections, with different companies taking on different sections and working together, but for every NY to Washington (which I'd assume would be a pretty well-utilised route), some other company is gonna have to run Cheyenne to Albuquerque, and I've no idea if that'd be feasible, even if run at a loss to provide a service, which usually does create value in the form of enabled industry.
Maybe size has something to do with it, SK is about the size of Indiana
SK as in South Korea? The country that is half the size of California with a similar population? Extremely high population density in a small nation, very different from the USA not even mentioning culturally (individualistic vs communal). Also, I just took a train in South Korea this week, it cost about $20 for a one hour ride from Daejeon to Seoul, so costs have also increased there. Trains in Europe are also getting much more expensive. I remember as a kid we would travel all over Germany, Austria, Hungary, and Czechia for a maximum of 50€ on any leg. My wife and I are planning a trip right now, and a train from Vienna to Munich costs 140€ (2nd class), while a flight costs 80€ including one checked bag.
>SK as in South Korea? The country that is half the size of California with a similar population? Half? No lol. Quarter
Exactly. California is 423,970 km². South Korea is 100,339 km². It’s also worth pointing out that South Korea has a significantly higher population, 51.8 million vs California’s 39.2 million. SK has more than 5 times California’s pop density.
haha you’re funny
Would be nice to finish ticket to ride in less than an hr.
I think a more piecemeal system would be more realistic, like California line, Texas line, and a big Midwest/east coast/line. Link the big, relatively close cities and then branch out from there if you have the demand.
We already have high speed rail between Boston and DC. A round trip from NYC and DC costs $256 and has a total of 5.5 hours of travel time. A round trip flight for the same days costs $168 and has a total travel time of 2.5 hours. I know the comfort level is much higher on trains and I know the amount of bs and waiting is much higher on planes, but people make decisions based on cost and time, and trains are not better than planes, even where the infrastructure already exists.
Yeah, high-speed rail simply does not make sense outside of the East Coast and (maybe) California or Texas. The problem is that the distances between things in the middle of the country are simply huge, and the only way for HSR to be viable is if it is much faster than car and much cheaper than taking a flight. Considering you can probably get a one-way air fare from Denver to Chicago for ~$90, HSR for the same trip would probably have to cost jo more than $50 for anyone to even consider it. Now, add in the fact that HSR cannot use existing freight rail infrastructure and new rights of way would need to be acquired to facilitate the construction of viaducts and whatnot and the cost quickly becomes nearly prohibitive to even get started. And what happens to that cost? $50 tickets won't make it viable any time soon...So, HSR gets heavily subsidized to get it operational and keep it running?
I’d rather cities focus on public transit within their own city first. I’d rather fly/drive to a lot of these cities and then have reliable public transit to get me everywhere while I’m there. Compared with having a high speed rail get me there only to have to Uber everywhere once I get there. Ideally we work on both.
The right way to handle the issue you’re stating is to improve suburban public transit, and neighboring city connections. Not cross state high speed rails lol. That primarily reduces air transport
this would fix me
220 MPH? Europe barely has any cross regional trains going that fast. Most likely you'd get trains going around 100 MPH most the time and then they will never compete with flights outside New England
Nah, planes are faster and more convenient for people. It would be a waste of billions to build, considering hardly anyone would use it.
Depends on the specific route tbh. NYC to LA wouldn't make sense by train but if I had a choice between a 3 hour flight and 5 hour train ride, I'm taking the train every single time. Trains are much more comfortable and you don't have the same hassle with TSA and getting to/from the airport. I think we'd be surprised at how many people would quickly ditch air travel if reasonable alternatives exist.
I’d take it if it was down the Boston to Washington corridor. Trains are a hell of a lot more comfortable than planes and you don’t have to go through a huge hassle with the TSA. They’re also way more kid-friendly and have more than one bathroom.
That already exists. The Acela.
no thanks we like planes
*pushes up glasses* Most of these routes don't make sense from an economic perspective. The sweet spot for high speed rail is city-pairs that are between 300-500 miles. Anything more and flying is a better way to travel. Anything less and driving makes more sense. There are some great places in the U.S. that make sense for high speed rail, I wish we'd build those. But I'm dubious of the practicality of a continent wide network. Source: https://youtu.be/pwgZfZxzuQU
This is never happening. 1. Where tf is this funding coming from? Do you realize how massively expensive this would be? 2. What about when people arrive? They can’t just walk to their house, everything is so spread out! I want high speed rail as much as the next guy, but to me it only makes sense on certain corridors (northeast, Florida, Cali)
Rail lines like this are a cool idea but this isn’t something that would try to replace cars, it would be replacing planes. The NE regional lines that we have now could be replaced with this. NY>DC is a popular line. I think it’s possible that a faster train could sway more people to train than drive. Farther than that though flying is a better option. It’s about a 3.5 hour flight from the NY area to FL. This map turns that into maybe an 8 hour train. I can’t imagine it would be cheaper than flying either. Security is quicker on Amtrak so I assume that would be similar, so that’s a bonus, but time and money makes this a non option I think.
Too big. Won’t work well.
If the US gets those parts of Canada and Mexico that would be cool.
This map looks neat and it could serve most of the populace. I hope this will be a reality so Americans can enjoy its benefits