[image] What I wish high-speed rail were like in North America
I tried to make it fairly realistic. Obviously I would like HSR absolutely everywhere, but a line through middle of nowhere Montana probably would not see much ridership and would come at extreme cost (especially in the mountains).
Imagine Montréal<->New York in 2h instead of 11h... We could go there the morning like leave at 6AM from Montreal and be in NYC at 8AM, spend the day there, and go back at like 10PM
I think you would need an east-west line further north - perhaps continue west from Omaha or Denver - to make east coast to west coast travel practical.
I was just thinking this too, having to go all the way to LA from Washington before the rest of the country is weird, and anyone who lives in the west is screwed over by this map.
Transit shouldn't be profitable... But the cost to build an HSR rail (which costs more than traditional rail) that went that distance vs ridership that a Vancouver to Toronto line would see to recoup some of that cost would make it a really tough sell to tax payers.
IIRC I clocked that NY-LA line at something like 14 hours with medium HSR and down to 10 with the newest shit that can run on steel. In either case it's plenty fast for a sleeper train. There's also a pre-existing corridor, and, most importantly, massive population centres: A sleeper each direction each day won't nearly be enough to cover demand but that's no biggie you can spread them out and e.g. have people get up or start sleeping at Huston (allowing them to get on and off) or let them sleep through the whole of Texas. That's already three trains each giving the passengers even more possibilities.
You probably want to close the middle traverse from Colorado to Oregon and then connect to whatever the Canadians are doing east-west, but that doesn't mean that the southern corridor doesn't make sense in isolation.
NY to LA will never be 14 hours with current or near future technology. Its 50 hours from Chicago to LA with the slow trains and while high speed rail is a significant improvement its not crazy enough to get speed increases like that.
For high-speed rail? Basically, yes. Unless you're into spending a couple million bucks per mile to rip out big chunks of the mountain. High speed rail can't reasonably navigate tight turns or steep grades.
I’m inclined to believe you, and have to say I love to see discussion like this here on lemmy’s version of fuckcars, but curious, does anyone know what switzerland does? Afaik, they have tons of rail and tons of mountains. Is it all/mostly low-speed? Sorry if it’s a dumb question or easy to answer.
I honestly think it’s a marquee example of some of the ways our North American culture has failed us. It’s a level coordinated infrastructure that we just can’t pull off despite so clearly being a net gain in quality of life for the average citizen.
So many if not all of the faults of the US where the average citizen would benefit don’t benefit the wealthy and so things remain the same. And many if not all of the faults that benefit the wealthy harm the average citizen. The US government does not care about the average citizen they care about the wealthy class and nothing more.
It’s not a “we just can’t seem to pull it off” and more of a “they won’t let us”
You have 6 States that have no routes that go through them and a few that have cities on the edge of the border. That's at least 12 senators that would never let's this pass on the federal level. I would love to see this happen but you have to have some connection in each state to get federal support.
One of the problems with this is that currently, a lot of these smaller city routes don't have a lot of demand. You could maybe get one train per weekday from Des Moines to Chicago for instance, Thats if you stopped at Iowa City, Moline/Rock Island, and maybe outside Chicago.
Same thing, like Tuscon to Albuquerque. Or any of the Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska lines.
I think if these routes existed though, there would grow demand around that route tho.
The green one in Wisconsin until Scott Walker wanted to make a point or something. Yet anothe thing he left smoldering when he fucked our state royally.
2 lines in Buffalo with an international hop up to Toronto? Stop, you're going to spoil us into thinking we're relevant. They'd skip all of upstate NY if we're being honest.
Well, last I checked there's only like six people in Montana, Idaho is full of potatoes, no one has ever willing gone to South or North Dakota and Wyoming is like a public toilet, only if you're really desperate do you ever go there.
I like the one line between Edmonton and Calgary. Mostly for how accurate it would be. I live in the middle of that forest in the North West of the picture and while a passenger train technically exists, it is intentionally inconvenient for some reason- requiring at least one night stay in a National Park.
Public transport has been a nightmare for a long time but having Greyhound shut down on us made it impossible to travel anywhere without a car.
The existing highline route, Amtrak Empire Builder, goes through north dekoda, Montana, Idaho, and Washington and it is a very heavily used route, so I'm not sure that wouldn't get usage if it existed.
Considering the number of f150's that cruise up there from Edmonton at 140km/h it would probably be as much of an environmental improvement as the Edmonton-calgary Line
I really like it. It is well thought out. Canada could use a rail line along it's southern cities, but I'm not sure highspeed is required. I would love the Boston to So. Cal line to be the first built.
Did you use population density to decide on the cities?
I generally tried to lay through-running lines between large cities that aren't too far apart and avoiding rough terrain as much as possible. Flat land with plenty of large cities not too far apart? Perfect for HSR. Mountains with cities few and far between? Not so much.
The whole video is pretty good if you happen to find it interesting. Pretty much all of the counters that are useful to have in your arsenal to any type of 'iT cAnT wOrK hErE' brain-dead comments from people.
This is always such an interesting topic. I remember doing a project on this in school. This would be such a nice upgrade for the public.
The tough thing is how much US rail & land is privately owned by commercial operators. Plus virtually all of that rail would need to be redone to accommodate HSR. Additionally, I think tickets would often need to be subsidized to be competitive to alternatives in many cases (some regional flights will already likely be the same price as what commercial HSR tickets would be).
The cost always makes it tough to justify versus other potential places for the government to spend its money.
Not that I wouldn't like to see it done. I think having HSR would be transformative for America in a great way.
I mean I'm down for leaving Utah and Idaho disconnected from the network (and they probably like it that way too) but isn't there this big railway going through Utah already?
Canada is actually making bank because their pacific nw to midwest rail system is better than US ports so a publicly owned mixed traffic route from WA or OR to the great lakes is needed to compete with canada for shipping traffic.
I tried to keep it semi-realistic. There's a ton of mountains and very few people east of the Cascades. Regular non-HSR trains would still run there. HSR can't handle nearly as sharp turns or nearly as steep gradients, so building HSR through mountains gets crazy expensive crazy fast. Without population density to support it, it'd probably be a boondoggle to build HSR there. Plus, the vast majority of travel is regional, so most trips in the PNW would be served quiet adequately by having that West Coast HSR line.
Of course, if the goal were to completely replace airplanes and demolish the interstate system, then HSR might make more sense.