C'mon ride the (high speed) train, hey, ride it, woo woo!

What time did you leave your house?

What time did you arrive at your destination?

There's much more time required for flying than the actual flying time.


If your flight is at 1 pm, you have to check-in at maybe 11.30 am, having arrived at the parking lot at 11, having maybe left the house at at 10.30.

On arrival at 2 pm, you then have to wait until 2.30 for your bags to arrive, and then have another half hour journey on a bus to get to the centre of the city.

That 55 minute trip is actually 4.5 hours.


Doing the same by train, and assuming it still takes until 11 am to get parked, you can catch a train at 11.30, and be in the city centre of your destination by 2.30, beating flying by half an hour.

 

Are you adding check in and check out times and transit from your start point and to your destination?

 

We left Atlanta around 9:00 am and we were in San Fran at 1:00pm with a stop in LA and 3 hours of time change. If I took your fictional high speed rail that would have been a Tuesday to Friday trip.

 

First off, nobody at all is suggesting an Atlanta - LA high speed link. People aren't suggesting the whole of the USA should be linked via high speed rail. That would be daft. There are no 2000+ mile high speed routes. The longest in the world is Beijing - Guangzhou, 1500 miles, taking 8 hours.

Secondly, you don't seem to have included time taken from landing in SF to get to the city - which isn't exactly speedy if memory serves me right.

And while a one hour or so stop in LA (I'm assuming a 5h flight, landing at 11, catching the connecting flight at 12) would probably make it quicker overall in this case, it's only the case because you caught a connecting flight, with no need to check in again, no need to go through security again, and you got good connection times - and obviously, your starting point had you already at the airport, which would not be the case normally.

 

How far are we away from having our own personal drones?



Ps...my apologies to @crazypete13 in advance. The builder's name is Wang!

 

Trains make a lot of sense in Japan due to all the mountains.

For the USA, the east coast is where it makes some sense, Boston to DC with stops in between.

Even if we do build a east cost and a west coast train, linking the all the country with fast trains would not be economically sensible.

I would love a bullet train from Chicago to NYC, even if it took longer than a flight, but I do not think it would be economically smart. Maybe if we go to a Carbon tax to price in air flight pollution, even then it may be iffy.

 

Wang dang, sweet dronetang

 

Many countries have high speed trains and all of them seem to make several stops, probably having one big stretch where full speed is reached. I recently rode the Italian system from Venice to Rome and it was mostly along flat terrain.

I'm not quite sure why similar urban concentrations should not be suitable for systems like that. As a matter of fact, even we backwards Flori-duh-ans are building a system from Miami to Orlando:

http://www.local10.com/travel/take-a-sneak-peak-at-brightline-train-from-orlando-to-miami

While not a TGV per se, the system will travel at 125 mph, making the 250 mile trip in about 3 hours.

 

Nothing wrong with faster trains, shit just elevating the current trains would make them faster as they would not have to worry about some dumb ass driving into the intersection.

We can make many improvements like that to our system.

But that is not a bullet train. Bullet trains have to make few stops to be at full speed for longer times.

A Miami, Tampa bay, Orlando train with just those 3 stops could be a bullet train (not a straight line, but that is ok).

A Orlando to Miami train that stops 10+ Times is not a bullet train.

 

Looking a Tokyo - Nagoya, at 366km (230 milles) a bit less than Miami - Orlando, they have three types of bullet trains on that route.

Nozomi are fastest at 100 minutes, where Nagoya is the 3rd stop.

Hikari are next, at 126 minutes. For those, Nagoya is the 6th stop.

Slowest are Kodama trains, at 170 minutes. Nagoya is the 12th stop for those.

As a rule of thumb, you could probably say that each stop adds 8 minutes to a journey.


The important thing for modern trains isn't needing a lot of time to get up to speed - they are pretty quick in reality. The common thing that slows trains down is bends in the track and having to cross points near stations, as that requires slower speeds. Older tracks in city centres often curve through the city. British cities are pretty dreadful for that, which is one reason why there's only one genuine high-speed route at the moment.

* I did have a look for these trains to show that while Kodama trains are not as flash as the Nozomi ones, they are very definitely still bullet trains. However, when I typed in "Nozomi", rather than getting a train, I got a screen full of pictures of a very pleasant Japanese girl in her underwear.

For comparison, Hikari brings up a young cartoon girl, and Kodama is a cartoon ghost.

The classic bullet train, that everyone thinks of when they think of a bullet train, have long since been phased out.

 

That is some goal post moving there. Checking the internetz, few system reach more than 300 kmh but plenty reach around 200-250 kmh.




Even the plan in Florida calls for 3 stops in the South, then a long stretch without any.

 

The point being is no one is going to pay $300 to ride the train. So it will need to be highly subsidized.\

 

The funny thing is I would actually be for subsidizing train travel where it makes sense.

 

What journey would cost $300? LA to San Francisco?

 

Yes, we were promised that a one way ticket would cost $86 and the project is already 3 times over budget, so it is going to cost someone $300 to get from LA to San Fran.... assuming this boondoggle gets completed.

 

Well someone has to pay... if they project the cost of a ticket will be between $86 to $105 dollars and the project is 3 times over budget then simple math says it will cost around $300 to get someone from LA to San Fran on your fancy high speed train.

Sorry about your eyes.

 

Simple minded math gets expensive very quickly.

 

Did I ask you to do my taxes? I wouldn't let you wash my underwear.

 

Problem being that it's much more likely that a threefold increase in budget for something that's nowhere near completion yet is going to yield a "3 x something greater than 1" fold increase in ticket prices than some magical "something less than threefold" increase.

 

It is only money. California can print more.