Americans get the government they deserve. Apparently they don’t deserve much atm
No one deserves this.
EXBLAIN
XD Also, I’m a car enthusiast and I love them, but fuck cars. I’d love it if I could just walk everywhere but nah, cuz 'MURICA.
Ban dis dick swallower
Yikes this comment section got flooded by car brains making some wild fucking claims.
I wonder if it’s a brigade, bots, or trolls. I’m having difgiculty imagining they’re genuine commenters considering some of them are recommending cars on fuckcars.
Top comment for me is some boomer-brain ranting about the TSA ruining transit…by rail.
the air line business lobbest against this all the time. if this was a thing in the USA the air line industry would collaps.
Ughh this comment section. Americans are so dumb?m, and yes I speak for myself as well. We have been so propagandized my exemptional individualism that when we’re presented with something that could benefit all of we turn and run. It’s so god damn stupid.
TSA would make it take 3 hrs to get through security and every state transport agency would funnel so much money to the mob that each ticket would cost $4k and you’d still have your seat cancelled due to overbooking.
We don’t know how to make and have nice things.
Someone “trains” and America thought they said “trans.”
The US environment, systems, and societies are not conducive to HSR. You will see widespread cheap electric flights before you see HSR. Here’s a good video explaining why: https://youtu.be/753xlF0EWsI
Basically the land costs way more, it’s viewed as business that needs to profit, not infrastructure you spend on, and you cant bulldoze over people as cheaply to make the necessary routes.
Public transport doesn’t need to turn a profit. Once that’s fully understood, the rest makes far more sense
You’re wrong and the video you provided is wrong.
Which are problems that can be fixed??
Legal (anti-rail legislation both regarding constructing and operating it) and political (lack of funding and open political opposition).
I really don’t get this pro train community. Cars are much more convenient. U can haul multiple Things. Kids, griceries, furniture - this is not easily replaceable with trains.
And Nobody commutes from Chicago to nycAfter 2.5 hours you will be in South Bend. You will be concentrating on the road so you don’t die. Meanwhile after chilling with a coffee and a good book for 2.5 hours the train passenger will be refreshed and in NYC.
I have hauled my kids, with luggage and car seats, on a train. I have also taken my bicycle which I attach luggage to, and had work send me home with a box full of equipment. What are you talking about?
I have never been stuck in traffic on a train.
I’ve never had the train stop or slow down due to a horrible crash of another train.
None of my friends have ever been killed by a train.
can’t speak for the third one, but at least the first one happens regularly in germany (which is why we need more rails on the ground). as for the second one, well… does it count if train is not starting, because the crash is still not cleaned up?
But you need to walk a lot from the train sometimes. And haul all your stuff
U can haul multiple Things. Kids, griceries, furniture - this is not easily replaceable with trains.
You’re so right. Trains are much smaller than the average GMC RAM 15000 OvercompensationMobile™ and therefore cannot fit any of those things. Or run red lights. Or be used to murder cyclists. Hell, those newfangled electric ones can’t even roll coal! Absolute disgrace.
Easy, we’re idiots.
Why would I, a Chicago resident, want to go to nyc
To get real Pizza
you’d still have to board a plane unfortunately. Also there are flights from Chicago to Naples. 🤷
I’ve had NY pizza and bagels, both are vastly overrated.
The unfathomable truth is that New Jersey has better pizza.
But hey have you had Chicago deep dish or tavern style? Both are lacking
we have animal abuse at home
if you don’t like how it feels when you are reminded you abuse animals, consider stopping
because they have Mamdani
To get to new jersey where all the cool people outside Chicago are.
To proselytize midwestern thriftiness to the spendthrift heathens.
Fresh seafood (ocean version) because a 7 hour train to Seattle seemed a bit much, they aren’t building a train to the Hudson Bay, and you absolutely aren’t going to Louisiana
To see your mother, Brian. Why don’t you call more often?
My feeling is that widespread high speed rail will never take off in America there are too many barriers. Two that come to mind that will delay and increase the cost to prohibitive levels are Private Land acquisition and Environmental assessments and preservation laws.
What I think will be a more realistic “High speed Rail” option for the US is using existing infrastructure in new ways. Something like fully automated cars, where each car is similar to a rail car and the connection between cars is digital not physical.
What do you think they did to create the highway system in the first place, numbskull?
The barriers are other humans so it depends on the flows of information.
Are they also big challenges for highway projects?
Yes. But I would think less since that infrastructure has largely been in place for many decades. It’s not building something out from nothing but updating and maintaining something already in place
So replace the highway with tracks
What a strange argument. For those effected by projects it does not matter how anything is connected to anything. That said, HSR does not need to be part of an HSR network to make sense.
New Highways are built all the time and many are widened, which also requires a lot of real estate to be taken over by highway infrastructure.
I think the best we’ll see for high speed rail in the US is limited routes between relatively close cities with high demand. We’re already seeing that with the stuff Brightline is doing (though it’s debatable how high speed some of their routes could be called). For everything else, electric airliners are coming. They’ll start on short routes (like feeders to major airports) and they’ll gradually work their way up as battery tech improves.
Yeah, the problem is train tickets are about the same cost as a plane ticket. There’s little incentive to choose rail.
Costs me $45 to take a train from fresno to San Francisco, there ain’t no way I can get a plane ticket that cheap.
When you include airport security the train is faster than flying.
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It’s always a bit ridiculous seeing posts about public transport, from the country which doesn’t know public transport. Claim and picture of this post are accordingly ridiculous. This isn’t public transport, this is a pipe dream.
Not really. Maglev isn’t a pipedream. The Transrapid is a fully functional technology that could be built anytime. It has never been done (as intercity line), mainly because the Chinese made the decision to stick with traditional HSR technology after building a fully functioning (and reliably working for already 20 years) Transrapid demonstration system to the Shanghai airport. I do agree that it was the right call for China, but not because Transrapid is a pipedream, rather that traditional HSR is more efficient financially. What I am still scratching my head over though is that Germany was so short sighted to first develop a fully functional mature technoloy and then being so stingy to not even build a demonstration corridor over a few millions being saved. In my opinion it was a mistake not to build the Hamburg-Berlin corridor back in the day. Yes, it would have been more expensive but it would have been a unique thing certainly drawing crowds on its own, beside giving a rapid intercity connection that would have worked reliably.
For a manageable premium in costs, it should be totally possible to build a proper intercity Transrapid corridor. At speeds beyond 350 km/h it could be reasonable, except that Maglev doesn’t solve the air resistance issue, which is the reason why no one has really pushed beyond 400 km/h yet.
The Transrapid isn’t done though. China has decided to build the first generation HSR network traditionally, but they are developing Maglev for future implementations, based on their Transrapid experience. The image above is from their current prototype of a next generation Transrapid based maglev.
Makes you think that a technology that is 30 years old hasn’t been put in service once…
But this is beside the point. Public transport is about a fast, reliable and comfortable option for the daily commute, to replace cars. Not about making long-range options an hour faster…
It has been in service for 20 years but only on a single short line. it is clear that the technology is more expensive than the HSR in Germany that is at 300 km/h or below, and then DB is an absolute mess nowadays anyway, incapable or incompetent of building the regular rail projects it is even contractually obliged to.
Your definition of public transport is very strange. Rail, including Maglev, can serve different purposes. Inter-city connections are one of those. I know it is a fairly foreign concept to many Americans even though you can find those things at least in some corners of the country. If it is one hour faster, this enables corridors that were not feasible before. It is the question if the costs still make sense but we can’t know until we see an actual line being built. China appears to still believe that the technology makes sense, otherwise they’d have not invested into more R&D based on the Transrapid technology. We’ll see if they will make something out of it. Germany is probably not large enough to actually have any national need for a system as fast as +400 km/h. China being considerably larger might be a different story.
edit:if the trains were faster the cost would make sense. if that 20 hour amtrak ride was actually 2.5 hours like the planes to get from the middle of the us to the east cost of the us, then the 194$ train ticket vs 98$ (minimum you could find is probably like 98$ you’re more or less looking at like 120$/plane ticket) plane ticket would make sense.
Flying: The fastest and most popular mode of travel. Over 50 daily nonstop flights operate between NYC airports (LGA, JFK, EWR) and Chicago airports (ORD, MDW), with flight times averaging roughly 2.5 hours.
Amtrak Train: The Lake Shore Limited runs direct daily service between New York Penn Station and Chicago Union Station, taking approximately 19 to 20 hours.
Round-trip flight prices from New York to Chicago start around $232, and one-way tickets start around $84 to $113 on platforms like Google Flights.
it’s around 198$ one way for new york to chicago, amtrak.
*it’s not cost feasible to sleep next to your bathroom on amtrak for 20 hours for 200$. *
Amtrak’s annual cost for fuel, power, and utilities is roughly $330 million to $336 million based on recent fiscal year reports. 2024-2025 report https://www.amtrak.com/content/dam/projects/dotcom/english/public/documents/corporate/financial/Amtrak-Audited-Consolidated-Financial-Statements-FY2025.pdf
The total global airline spending on jet fuel is estimated at roughly $291 billion. source: https://blog.openairlines.com/time-is-money-fuel-inefficiency-costs-us-airlines-daily
