I wonder if we'll ever get back to "High Speed Air" in my lifetime.
Back in the 70s, you could rock up at the airport twenty minutes before your flight left, jump on with minimal hassle, and cruise along at 600mph to your destination. Now, you need to endure two hours of having your fingernail clippers confiscated so that you can fly at 500mph to save on fuel costs.
That seems to be the true advantage of rail travel. As it said on the loudspeaker in Berlin HBF last time I was there: "Please try to arrive on the platform at least five minutes before your train is scheduled to depart."
Sadly, I bet the way we'll end up equalizing this will be that somebody will eventually bomb a TGV and we'll have to start doing the two hour confiscate-your-kids'-apple-juice routine at the train station too.
That still exists outside the US. Last year I took a flight from germany to a conference in poland and strolled through the airport after checking in. I left the security zone by accident - simply walking through a pair of sliding doors which only open from one side - 10 minutes before departure.
But it wasn't a big problem, I simply went through the metal detector/xrays for hand luggage and arrived at the gate with time to spare.
Someone before me in the line even asked if they had to take their shoes off, the security guy said "haha, no, this isn't america".
as someone who has taken a few hundred flights outside the US in the last years: people get to take their shoes off quite often, but mostly boots and worker's shoes, not sneakers.
Sometimes they also ask you to take off a hoodie or such clothing, of course your belt, put your laptop separately from the rest, get an occasional pat down, and the liquid restrictions ("don't take that mysterious bottle in here, but your totally oscure laptop battery and the liquor we sell inside is ok"). Also, check in usually closes 45 minutes before departure so you _can_ do online checkin with most companies, but if you have luggage you still need to e at the airport one hour early.
Still, the american process is heavier, but nowhere I've been in europe and asia there is a process as simple as getting on a train (get there, jump on, leave).
EDIT: possibly it's a function of the airport traffic?
I'd say in Japan it's still train-wise in smoothness for domestic flights. They still sell tickets up to 30 minutes before the flight, tell you to be at the airport and have your luggage checked in 15 minutes before, and at the gate 10 minutes before departure. With no luggage there is no check in as long as you have a mileage card or a phone where you can show the 2D barcode. You can even bring liquids.
It baffles me that the country famous for high speed trains never bothered to build one between the city where 1/4 of its people live and the airport that handles most of its international flights (and used to handle all of them). Skyliner is pretty fast but it's not a Shinkansen, and Narita Express is basically just an ordinary train.
Of course, it's also baffling that they built the airport so far away in the first place, but that's another story.
> Of course, it's also baffling that they built the airport so far away in the first place, but that's another story.
The Kanto plain suffers from a dearth of available flat land, even more so enough available flat land to build a major international airport (this being worsened by Japan's weak eminent domain and history of resistance to relocation, half a century later there are still families living on the site and farming in the middle of the runways: http://www.japansubculture.com/the-phantoms-of-narita-airpor...)
I think it's a function of the airport itself. I have been to Qatar and the security was as simple as sliding my bag in. I didn't have to remove my belt, watch, or phone.
Total time to pass security: 2 minutes.
Total time to pass immigration: 15 minutes. (depends on traffic).
I remember a friend who caught her flight just 10 minutes before gates closed. She made it.
Edit: HaHa. Forgot my local airport. I can get from the entry door, to the Airplane bus in 2 minutes (security + immigration + walking). It usually only have 1 or 2 flights per day and feels very friendly.
That's strange, I flew from Toronto to Budapest through Munich, and Munich was by far the strictest security I encountered. They made my take off my shoes and sweatshirt.
So it's maybe not "outside the US" just "in some places."
The amount of screening varies a lot by airport and is wildly inconsistent.
I fly out of London Gatwick and Oslo Airport a lot, and have been seething at security staff there who keeps insisting on extra screening for my now 6 year old son. Last time he was crying and screaming his head off because he didn't understand why the lady insisted on patting him down.
A few years ago, one of the screeners looked almost panicked when he noticed that my sons shoes did not have solid heels (they were the kind that light up when you walk) - you could see him looking around frantically for someone before one of the other screeners noticed and explained to him what it was.
(on the other hand, I've repeatedly by accident taken bottles of liquids through in my carry on after failing to realise his mom has "helpfully" put in water or juice for him to have on the way to the airport, and they've not noticed even once - the liquid "ban" is a total joke)
Other places they'll wave you through without paying attention at all.
It's probably a domestic vs. international thing (where "domestic," within Europe, probably includes actual-domestic as well as other destinations inside the Schengen area). To a large degree, US requirements have infected international travel around the world -- you can't fly into the US from a terminal that allowed people that weren't held to approximately the US's standards.
>Under Title 49 of the U.S. Code, Section 44907, the Department of Homeland Security is required to assess security at foreign airports with direct service to the United States to determine compliance with standards established by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO).
I had to unpack my entire backpack, every pocket, and camera equipment at Frankfurt (on a trip to Rome) not all that long ago because I had a summer sausage in my backpack. They weren't rude about it, but it was tighter security than I've gone through in the states.
The security won't get blown out of proportion for trains like air, because while trains can do significant damage to themselves and surrounding buildings - you cant take one and crash it anywhere you like. 9/11 never would have happened with a train. A hijacked plane is a missile.
> Trains still have an "end of the line." So, yes, you could if you were going fast enough.
You can overrun the buffer stop (happened last year at O'Hare, a blue line train overran its buffer stop and climbed up an elevator) but you're just going to go a bit past the buffer stop (relatively, most likely a fraction of the train length), at best you'll get just outside the station Montparnasse-style (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montparnasse_derailment). That's hardly a guided missile with complete freedom of movement in the same way a plane is.
You can't drive a train into the white house no matter how often you try, because there's no rail leading to it, or even ending in its general direction, which is anywhere near enough the white house for that to be a concern.
You can replace the buffer stop with an incline too steep to climb with the available traction at which point their best bet is derailment by going too fast around a turn. But again, with properly banked curves the trains simply can’t go fast enough for that to happen.
> You can replace the buffer stop with an incline too steep to climb
There generally isn't the room to plop down hills instead of buffer stops. Instead it's possible to use energy-absorbing buffer stops (rather than the traditional "hard" buffer stops), possibly with e.g. dowty retarders on the track beforehand to force specific speed ranges on incoming trains.
If a train hit the end of the line at London Paddington at full speed it would be absolute carnage, surely. Not a guided missile with freedom of movement, but it's already heading in the right direction.
Even if you were going fast enough, you couldn't take one and crash it anywhere you like.
Into the platform at Grand Central, maybe. Into the WTC and Pentagon, not so much.
Some kind of automatically enforced speed limiter when the train detects that it's near the end of the line would probably not be hard to implement, or maybe has been already. IIRC many trains automatically slow for curvy areas of track.
> Also aircraft security was too much even pre-9/11.
In 1998 I was able to walk onto a plane in Sydney and fly to Zurich and walk off while barely breaking stride (I only had carry-on luggage, and Swiss customs waved me through based on my passport being US).
Trains have automatic systems that engage the emergency brake if they ignore stops or go faster than allowed. They are not completely foolproof, but it's pretty hard to crash trains.
>Back in the 70s, you could rock up at the airport twenty minutes before your flight left
This still exists, for example Tegel airport in Berlin. Also, in the 70s there was waaaaaay less traffic in airports so it is simply not a fair comparison.
>Sadly, I bet the way we'll end up equalizing this will be that somebody will eventually bomb a TGV and we'll have to start doing the two hour confiscate-your-kids'-apple-juice routine at the train station too.
So that's fascinating. Having no expertise whatsoever on the topic of domestic Japanese transportation my immediate response is "Strong competition from fast rail means that air travel is a superior experience"
It breaks my heart we don't have fast rail in the US. Even if it was just the North Eastern corridor (extended maybe to Chicago and Atlanta) it would have a huge impact on air travel. Of course the cost and final date to roll this out means it's probably not worth buying into.
Texas has a project of a high speed train between Houston and Dallas, it would link the 2 cities in 90mn (instead of 3:30h of driving, or 70mn of plane. So if you spend more 20mn more at the airport than at the rail station , the train would be faster.
http://texascentral.com/the-facts/
you can even bring your own bottled drinks/liquid on Japan domestic flights. they have a machine specifically for "scanning" drink/liquid. put your bottle on it, green light, then off you go. not sure how it works
There's a UK company in talks with the DoD on rolling these out for military use, and I'm sure they will expand to civilian airports eventually. I'm not sure if this is the same company, but they're doing the same thing:
http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/nov/02/scanner-anal...
Yes, I was assuming a typical disposable transparent plastic or glass bottle. I have not seen the machine in question, so I am guessing, but it would be very easy to implement and cover the majority of cases.
I found it more stressful. The biggest place where delays are caused at an airport is at security, so when I arrive at an airport, this is the first thing I want to take care of, and cannot relax until I've passed through it.
To be told I cannot go through security until a few moments before the flight departs (because it is not even open, or the gate not even assigned) means that anything that does go wrong will cause me to miss my flight.
Not to mention the expense of having screening apparatus at every gate seems a little inefficient. It means everyone on the flight tries to cram through the one line at the same time, whereas if it were in advance, it could be spread out in time and over more lines.
Amsterdam Schiphol is like this, too, and yeah, it's great. I think for them it's because they're going for this combination airport/mall/mini-city vibe, and there are enough amenities that they want it to be attractive as a destination, even for people not flying, so they want to keep as much of the airport outside of security as possible.
We need to learn to live without frequent air travel just because it's energy inefficient. What we need to do is get better at going places while asleep (and trains are great for that). Telepresence means getting places in a hurry will be increasingly unimportant for most people.
Driverless cars will be an interesting phenomenon (and possibly a net increase in our energy use). People will start living in them, doing ridiculously long commutes, etc.
Thankfully, train do not have checked luggage and no practical technological way to introduce it (i.e. something that does not require to rebuild all the stations, most of them deep in the cities) - so there is a huge commercial imperative to tone down the security theater .
I hope at least, I don't want to be proven wrong on that one. Boarding the Eurostar for example, is definitively not a 5 min job, more like 1 hour the bad days, but at least you can still carry most of your stuff and considering you do not have 1 hour transit to the airport, it still beats the plane by a good 2 hours.
Eurostar is quite exceptional. They recommend 30 minutes.
There's a passport check, and a 30km undersea tunnel, which is probably considered a terrorist target. Knives, alcohol etc are permitted, but not compressed gas or liquid fuel. (I tried this once, on a camping trip.)
You can take an almost identical train from King's Cross to Glasgow, arriving 5 minutes before departure (or less, 2 is the minimum recommended time).
Just flew out of Boston this morning and was through security in under 5 minutes including the TSA pat-down due to opting out of the scanner. Watched a woman who I was with on the way to the airport make it through even faster as she got
to security < 15 mins before departure.
In fact, the last several times
I've flown security has generally been under 10 mins. SFO is typically the slowest and most highly variable for me, but at its worst I don't think has taken more than 20 mins. Some of the airports this is based on: RDU, MIA, LGA.
Flying out of Boston was nice the one time I did it. Security was fast and polite. I think I showed up with 35 minutes to spare and I just made it to my flight.
In the US we really don't have any rail alternative to flying. I'd love to know how European travellers thinks and weigh up rail (which seems relatively fast and efficient) vs flying. Do you think the two are interchangeable services? Is there a magical breaking point (more than 500km's distance etc) ?
The budget airlines provide such a customer hostile experience that many people prefer trains. These are (England) sometimes awful, but mostly okay and can be nice.
Commuting tends to be worse than the occaisional train journey. The baffling fare structure drastically needs reform -- the same journey can either cost £27 or £72 -- these will be the same class on the same day, just different times. It's frustrating. I like the Virgin trains - I've only ever had an unfun experience on one when the aircon broke. I really hate GWS and I will try to avoid using them where possible, even using a coach would be better. (Virgin trains have power sockets; GWS don't; even a National Express coach has power sockets and free wifi)
> the same journey can either cost £27 or £72 -- these will be the same class on the same day, just different times.
Or just bought at different times. I recently saw a return train ticket for £50, the next day it was £90, the next back to £50. I bought it then so not sure what happened after that. Admittedly that example was travelling over easter but it's a consistent annoyance.
I'll take the Eurostar from London to Paris even if it's slightly slower because it's just a nicer experience. But much further and I'll probably fly unless I'm making a point of taking a train for fun. The only other case would be if I'm taking a lot of luggage as that's much easier to do on a train. Back when I only had a big bulky laptop I might prefer a train to work on but these days my ultrabook is usable on a plane.
In France there's the issue of train lines basically starting and ending in Paris mean that flights are pretty quick cutting across the country (Lyon-Nantes for example).
But I think most people see domestic flights as a bother more than anything. The love for trains shows in the stats (second biggest per capita usage of trains after Japan), train stations are usually in the dead-center of town, and you don't have to deal with luggage limits.
> Is there a magical breaking point (more than 500km's distance etc) ?
For modern non-maglev high-speed train (>300km/h top speed), 1500~2000km is the limit assuming "severe" airport security. HST is very competitive up to ~1000km, then it tapers off as the faster plane speed compensates for the security measures and lack of comfort.
Of course price is also a big factor, and barebones budget airlines can provide stupid low prices.
When I used to fly from London to San Francisco regularly, I had everything down to a routine including the exact amount I could manage to squeeze into carry-on only so I could walk straight out at the destination. Despite that, it took me 16 hours door-to-door for an 11 hour flight. So even with a plane trip that long, about 1/3 of the total travel time was on the ground.
Of course that depends on your distance to the airport, but there train stations very often have a solid advantage. E.g. going from where I live in London to anywhere I'd like to actually go to in Paris via the Eurostar is faster because the train terminals on both ends are more conveniently located.
So the answer is "it depends" but unless you live much closer to the airport than the relevant train terminal it generally takes a quite long flight before air travel is faster. Even then, I will often prefer train if it is "only" a bit slower, because of perceived convenience and comfort (e.g. I'd easily pick one hour more on a train vs. 30 minutes shorter journey if the latter involves additional legs, such as getting off a plane and lugging my bags to a train or bus station to get in to town).
Rails is faster for a rail trip duration of up to 4 hours (no security, no lines, no checkin, plus you arrive right in the city centre). Which, depending on the route, comes to somewhere between 200 and 450 miles of distance.
As for me personally, I prefer to go by train even if it takes a little longer. Flying means most of the time spent is lost in queues and transit, whereas a train trip means a single long stretch of uninterrupted time, which is much more relaxing and/or productive.
In terms of price, it's usually pretty much the same. If you book ahead and get a good deal, a flight might actually be cheaper. On the other hand, if you need to travel a popular route on short notice, a flight will be outrageously expensive, whereas a train ticket costs the same even if booked 5 minutes before departure.
It just depends on the distance. Fro Zurich and Basel we take the train to Paris, Milan, Frankfurt, even Lille, but to go to Berlin, Hamburg, San Sebastián, we fly.
So 3 to 6 hours we take the train. More than that we tend to fly.
I can get a lot more work done on the train than flying.
> So 3 to 6 hours we take the train. More than that we tend to fly.
Yep. I could tolerate the longer travel times, but long distance train travel gets really expensive really quickly. For the price of a round-trip train ticket across Germany (Berlin to Cologne, around €100), I could also fly to London, Paris, Amsterdam, etc.
> Sadly, I bet the way we'll end up equalizing this will be that somebody will eventually bomb a TGV and we'll have to start doing the two hour confiscate-your-kids'-apple-juice routine at the train station too.
It would be easier to economically restructure passenger rail cars so that you had independent bomb resistant compartments. Trains have the disadvantage, in contrast with planes, that you can bomb the rails to wreck a train. However, they have the advantage of adding mass more economically. I suspect that we can eventually come up with good (though imperfect) countermeasures to rail sabotage as well. In any case, safeguarding the rails wouldn't impact boarding passengers as much.
Another thing to note is that it's just a lot harder to cause as much damage to a train. The deadliest Amtrak accidents involved collapsed bridges over water. Derailments or even head-on collisions almost always involve a dozen or less, often zero, fatalities.
Much of this is a function of potential and kinetic energy. High speed trains are going to have more kinetic energy, and therefore more potential for fatality.
If you ever fly within New Zealand, you'll know how air travel should be. No security at all. (Self)Check in and go have a seat in the lounge area with nice couches that anyone has access to.
> Pretty sure it's marketing though, the TGV can be veeery long sometimes, so it takes a while to walk to your assigned car.
Each trainset is a single unit though, so you can just step in at the first car and walk through the train to your seat. The only "danger" is paired trainsets (16 cars), if you're in the further one you have to walk a whole trainset to reach your own train (and even then it's only 200m/660ft), if you're cutting it really close you can probably forego your assigned seat and use the first trainset (you may not get a seat at all though).
I would like to see High Speed Rail replace most air traffic. I just read an article explaining how incredibly expensive air travel is for the climate, not to mention the cost to the passengers.
Air traffic increases greenhouse effect. Scientists measured noticeable temp drop over sky of US during the days after 9/11 attack with all jets grounded.
If you don't have bags and are checked in online, you can totally show up 20 minutes before a flight (just know the geometry of the place cause it might take a lot of walking/trams). I show up usually around 65 minutes before departure at SFO (international flight with checked bags); never had a problem.
> you can totally show up 20 minutes before a flight
I'm assuming you're talking about the scheduled boarding time, not departure time? Most airlines' contracts of carriage say that if you're not at the gate 15 minutes before departure, you'll be denied boarding.
EDIT: I guess it's not clear whether you meant "show up [at the airport]" or "show up [at the gate]".
>Back in the 70s, you could rock up at the airport twenty minutes before your flight left, jump on with minimal hassle, and cruise along at 600mph to your destination.
I basically did this from Tampa FL. I think I arrived at security for a domestic flight like 30 minutes prior to takeoff.
You can do that at Spokane Int'l (GEG). Flying is still an enormous hassle but at least GEG doesn't add much to the stress. Given a choice I'd take the ICE every time if we had such a thing here. Few hassles, comfortable seats, nice scenery out the windows. A little expensive but worth it to me.
Actually, come to think of it, out the bottom level then hail a cab to Berlin Zoo. And make sure it's ten years ago or they might have changed the recorded message :)
Amazing. Writing this from Berlin, which doesn't have maglev trains, but has phenomenal public transit. It's sad to be going back to the US soon where the infrastructure is so primitive.
Agreed. The current incarnation of the US transportation system is also downright unsustainable from a fuel and carbon standpoint, and will lead to various downfalls if something isn't done about it.
As much as I'm a public transportation advocate (I don't own a car, and refuse car rides if a public transportation option is available for the place I need to get to), it's becoming increasingly more difficult to promote this kind of lifestyle with the advent of Uber and other things that have made private gas-guzzling cars even more convenient than ever before. People also just don't like being told what to do and what not to do, even if what they are doing is going to kill their children.
Given the short-sighted nature of people, in general, the only way this is going to change is if we make public transportation more convenient than an Uber. What we need, very seriously, is to make self-driving cars/minibuses running on renewable energy happen as soon as possible. They can then be rigged up to become a "Public Transportation 2.0" system that gets anyone from A to B while dynamically routing and picking up others in-between and avoiding traffic jams from happening in the first place. It would also put the US back on the world map with a brand new, innovative system that's both environmentally efficient, cheaper to ride, and ultra-convenient at the same time.
Huh. I have pretty much the opposite feelings about Uber as you, as a fellow non-driver and public transit advocate. I think Uber (and also car-sharing services like Zipcar) are great for transit advocates, because they make it much easier for city dwellers to justify not owning a car, to the extent that I suspect that they actually increase transit usage.
Many people in my city (Washington, DC) that own cars don't actually need them most days, but they do have occasional needs that aren't easily doable by transit (Costco trips, driving out to see friends in the less-transit-friendly suburbs, hiking in Shenandoah, etc.) so they keep a car for that purpose. But the problem there is the incentives; the fixed costs of car ownership (a car payment, insurance, scheduled maintenance, etc.) are high, and once you've paid them, the incremental cost per mile of travel is really low (certainly way lower than the per-mile cost of transit), so if you have a car, you have a strong incentive to use it more than you need to. Uber and Zipcar are alternatives that make cars available in the circumstances where you need them and thus could allow these people to ditch their personal cars, and they also flip the cost incentives around: low-to-no fixed costs, and comparatively higher per-mile costs, which means you only use it if you really need it, and use transit most of the time.
Yeah, that's also true. It's very rare that I need to travel to a place that requires a car to get to, so I can spend on Uber in those cases, and that allows me to not own a car.
However, this isn't the way a lot of people use Uber; at least where I live a lot of people use Uber because it's faster and more comfortable than public transportation, not because public transportation doesn't get them where they need to. I've seen business school students (i.e. students who have cash to burn) frequently take Uber between MIT and Harvard for god's sake. There's direct bus and subway service, but it involves a 5 minute walk on both ends, they're too lazy to look it up, and don't want to wait outside.
Many medium to low density counties in the US operate on demand bus services that get anyone from A to B while dynamically routing and picking up others in-between.
They are usually subsidized (the county spends more than the service makes, so taxpayers are paying for the service) but still don't see the ridership it would take to justify higher service levels (these places generally don't have traffic jams, just short periods where you might have to wait for the second green to pass through a busy light).
These counties already tend to be depopulating, which is the main way to reduce car traffic levels in such situations. Broader economic change has left them geographically uncompetitive, or automation has destroyed jobs in whatever extraction industry pulled in the population in the past.
I think one of the best ways to improve the availability of public transport would be to treat rising housing prices as a government failure (it's currently considered a success when the value of someones home increases).
The real issue with automobiles and cities isn't so much the cars as the parking.
Parking takes up a huge proportion of urban land and street space that could be used for exclusive bus lanes. Parking requirements makes the building blocks of classic urban neighborhoods, like townhouses, small apartment buildings, and storefronts with apartments above, illegal to build. Using land for parking vastly increases the distance between destinations, making walking impractical. When walking is impractical, transit systems become ineffective because there are too few homes or destinations near them for them to have customers.
If you look at Washington DC's metro its pretty much the same QoS as you get off the Berlin metro. So I am not quite sure how its considered "primitive"
Berlin - 4 - 5 minute trains
DC - 6 minute trains
Berlin - 9 lines, 170 stations
DC - 6 lines, 91 stations
and thats not even the biggest metro system in the US. So really the problem isn't going back to the US, its going back to whatever place you're going to in the US. I am sure if you moved out to Zwiesel you would be in the same situation
Metro and subway systems in the US are to me basically comparable to systems abroad. I'd argue most US city rails are better than Berlin's.
Where you immediately notice is longer distance commuter and cross-country lines. I often take the train from Chicago to Detroit, and every time we stop partway for ~15-30 mins because the company can't run trains in both directions on the tracks. Even when we are moving, most of the time we can't come close to our top speed of 130 mph because we aren't on high speed track. Compare this to EU trains which run across the country non-stop at top speeds of 180 mph. Granted, not everywhere has high quality service, but most major cities do, which definitely can't be said about the US.
That I can agree with. I don't often ride long distance rail because even on the Northeast line which is I think the line with the highest ridership you often have to stop for freight trains and other trains.
I've never had to stop for a freight train on the northeast (between DC and NYC anyway), because Amtrak owns those tracks. You do sometimes have to stop for local commuter trains that share the tracks, or (more commonly) an acela overtaking a regional. By far the most common reason for delay, though, is the aging equipment.
My experience is that the US has awful public transit, with the arguable exception of NYC, purely because of its subway.
Here's the stats for Berlin vs Washington, as you wanted to make the comparison.
Berlin subway (U-Bahn) has 10 lines, 94km (route length).
Berlin trams have 22 lines, 190km.
Washington Metro has 6 lines, 118km.
No trams (under construction?).
I'm excluding the S-Bahn, as Washington doesn't have anything comparable.
Berlin's subway alone carries about 500 million passengers a year, versus 200 million on the Washington metro.
The difference in this case is quite easily explained by density of population - Washington is much smaller than Berlin, with 700k vs 3.5 million. However, this doesn't explain why other US cities have such poor public transit.
If you look at the numbers transported by American metro (subway) systems, there are 18 subway systems in Europe that carry more passengers than Chicago, the USA's second busiest.
>Washington Metro has 6 lines, 118km. No trams (under construction?).
DC is building a streetcar system. The H Street line is basically done and the streetcars are running, but there are issues to work out before it can officially open. Poor project management made it take forever and ended up having neighboring jurisdictions (Arlington) cancel their streetcar plans.
>The difference in this case is quite easily explained by density of population - Washington is much smaller than Berlin, with 700k vs 3.5 million.
DC is not less dense than Berlin is. DC is about the same density, actually. What DC is is small: DC is ~69 square miles vs 344 square miles for Berlin. The Metro actually travels relatively far into the suburbs covering far more than just DC itself (DC again being really tiny).
What is much less dense is the surrounding area. Arlington and Alexandria (both part of DC at one point, but now part of VA) are also relatively dense by US standards (especially where the Metro goes; many people do not own cars or own one car per family) but outside of those and a few other pockets of density most of the region is significantly less dense and thus the number of trips is lower.
Also, the DC area does have two commuter rails systems: MARC and VRE, run by Maryland and Virginia respectively. MARC reaches all the way to West Virginia. Based on a cursory browsing of Wikipedia (so it must be true) this seems to be what the S-Bahn is. Not sure how comparable they are though.
> However, this doesn't explain why other US cities have such poor public transit.
Many parts of the US experienced growth after cars came on the scene, and the infrastructure was designed with them in mind. This has since been shown to be a bad thing, but at the time it seemed like the way cities of the future should be built.
From then on, local governments basically mandated suburban living. Places like New York, DC, San Francisco, Chicago, etc. grew up before the car and so weren't ruined. Their suburbs may have been, but the cities themselves weren't. We are now trying to undo the damage.
The Washington Metro is comparable to the S-Bahn. DC doesn't have a system comparable to the Berlin Metro, because it doesn't have the dense tenement neighborhoods to support such a system.
The DC metro area actually has more population than the Berlin metro area. Most of it is just built in sprawling postwar American style, though it's urbanizing more than many equivalent American cities.
It's easy to call other rail infrastructures "primitive" when your baseline is Berlin to Munich. The US eastern seaboard handles those routes well too. Rail doesn't do so well when you need NYC to Chicago (~800 miles).
You would really compare German intercity travel to Acela (i.e., rail service on the Boston-NYC-Philly-DC route)? Three differences that immediately come to mind:
1) Severely limited track speeds through the entire NE corridor.
2) A boarding experience that seems to be modeled on air travel, with security gates, ID checks and waiting rooms.
3) Very infrequent service compared to main intercity routes in Europe.
Calling it primitive is provocative but pretty accurate.
1) Totally fair: average speed from DC to BOS is half of Berlin-Hamburg.
2) That's not my Acela experience at all; last time I took it (a few years ago) it was no more involved than boarding a Metra train in Chicago.
3) Totally fair.
I guess this is just knee-jerkism on my part. The topic comes up on HN every once in awhile about how backwards the US is w/r/t/ rail transport, and while you could still make a lot of strides on DC-BOS, there are good reasons why most of the country doesn't have rail connectivity. But that wasn't what was being argued here.
Infrastructure isn't a one size fits all arrangement. Passenger rail was once common in America. In fact, America has twice as much rail as the next in line. Why don't we use it for transport?
1) Because we all have cars. Aside from a few outliers (NYC, parts of Chicago, DC, Bay Area), US cities are designed with high car ownership in mind. Less than 10% of US households don't have a car.
Short train rides are less convenient than car trips. Especially since you'll most likely need a car at the destination.
Trains also only take you to limited stops. Cars can take you anywhere.
2) Flights are faster for longer range trips and America is a fairly spread out country. Chicago to Denver would still be a long highspeed rail trip.
3)Trains only make sense for intermediate range trips that begin and end in cities that people will stay close to the train station. Washington to New York, train is the best option.
But that sort of utility wouldn't support a robust nationwide network of passenger rail.
> But that sort of utility wouldn't support a robust nationwide network of passenger rail.
You don't need nationwide, you need regional. The East Coast and parts of the Midwest would do well with a decent train network. Sure, Chicago to Denver is never going to be reasonable, but Chicago to Indianapolis or St. Louis? That could be a train trip.
As American re-urbanizes, these sorts of trips become more and more reasonable to make by train as cars become less necessary.
The public transit is generally really phenomenal as you said but this year they went crazy with the renovation works.
I mean closing down the most important train line (north-south) for more than 4 months? And now also splitting the east-west metro line in two (again for a few months).
Aside from planned stuff tomorrow and Thursday the trains are off due to strikes. It happens multiple time a year as well.
This usually leaves you with highly unreliable buses and trams.
Primitive? Really? Doesn't seem to affect usage rates does it? Its a myth really, one that is perpetuated simply because people think its correct and far too many who like the idea of it being correct don't want to know otherwise.
Maybe Berlin and Germany stand out amongst Europe, but with regards to passenger miles trains are less that seven percent of all travel within the EU [1]. High speed rail does two things, eats up a lot of money and takes riders of slower rail. Even Japan has seen this as when the amount of high speed rail made available increased overall ridership decreased.
there is a lot of romance about trains but in the end they cost more per mile to build, use, and maintain, that even flying, in many areas. Slower than flying except over short distances and less convenient and timely over that short distance compared to cars. Public light rail is a boon doggle in many US cities, the costs to implement are beyond any reasonable time table of recovery.
Freight is king of the rail in the US, even Europe envies its status here and that makes a far greater impact on the environment than moving people
I think it's inner-city transport the parent is referring to. It really is fantastic in Berlin. Nothing beats a good metro for inner-city transport, and Berlin has it. Tokyo and New York is better, though, but then again those are vastly bigger cities.
And yeah, long-range train passenger transport generally sucks but it's not really relevant, as it's not inner-city.
Besides, train travel doesn't need to suck - Maglev may just go fast enough and be cheap enough to maintain to fix most of the problems. The train in the article will go for 40 minutes - that's far less than you need just to check in at the airport. And it will cover 330km - that's 4 hours by car. it would be foolish to pick any other means of transport between the two cities. It could go from SF to LA in 1h15m. Depending on how bad the airports are, it could even be competitive with air between NY and LA. But it won't become truly interesting until these trains go faster than planes (and I believe they will do so, eventually)
and I have no issues with inner city travel in Atlanta or Chicago. The issue at hand based on the original article is transport between cities. Hence the point I made is valid, the trope that Europe is some bastion of passenger transport by train simply isn't true, unless you count a few percentage points as an amazing number.
Not really if you count door to door. 1h15 Paris to Brussels, city-center to city-center and less time wasted.
Same thing with London-Paris, even if you fly to LCY, you're still going at least to Orly.
> and less convenient and timely over that short distance compared to cars
But not everybody can have a car or can drive or even want to bother with that.
"Less convenient", sure, let me worry about where to park my rented car, how to drive in an unknown city (even with GPS), etc. In Europe this is really not worth it in some cities (even in cities like Toronto, you shouldn't bother if you're going to the city center, trains beat flying for nearby cities (Ottawa/Montreal)
I would be happy with more reliable slower rail rather than high speed rail. If you know it's going to take 3 hours and you can get a seat, you can plan for that - it's when it might be anywhere between 1.5 and 5 hours, assuming your train isn't cancelled, and you might have to stand the whole way, that it becomes unpleasant.
They charge ridiculously high prices. But they can get away with it because Japan's roads make poor competition (there's not room for any more).
In many ways it's the other way around: the US has a massively subsidized road network that makes rail uncompetitive. But it's also simply that land is so much cheaper in the US that there's less need to use it efficiently.
Pretty sure paying off our debts,educating our kids and fixing the bridges that might collapse at any moment should come before a federally funded train that won't benefit more than 1% of the population.
Yes, we are discussing putting a maglev from St. Louis to Boise, Idaho because someone wanted to show you why it wouldn't work in the U.S. I bet if we thought about it for another second, we'd come up with more suitable places.
To be clear, I never really thought Boise->MO was realistic. Real options still wouldn't benefit more than a small portion of the country, unless we're going to build a high-speed rail network along side the highway system. Then you're talking hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars.
Ok, you go get right on that. I'll help you build that MagLev in our imagination. You are asking something that cannot be changed without drastic measures. You are asking American to not be the thing it is, a war mongering nation that has never not been at war or agitating and instigating or preparing for a war or conflict of some sort. We live in a war based economy with an insurmountable amount of support for exactly that in the voting populace.
>and also remember Berlin's system is essentially new and was rebuilt after reunification so you are looking at a modern system.
After the reunification, they only had to reconnect the lines that were separated by the wall. Only a few places needed some extensive work. You probably meant WW2 where most lines were destroyed. Note that Berlin was also one of the first cities in the world to have a metro system.
>No one is keeping you from remaining in Germany, are they? I can guarantee you they will approve your work permit and you can become a resident and eventual citizen.
No, they didn't simply have to connect some disconnected lines. Not only did the eastern infrastructure, have to largely be rebuilt from the ground up, but even the western part was outdated and old and reunification meant that billions were spent on upgrading infrastructure.
Upgrading and maintaining a transport infrastructure is necessary for big cities regardless of the wall circumstances. You don't think London, Paris and other big metropolitan cities in Europe spend billions on upgrading and maintaining their public transport infrastructure? I don't see Berlin having a completely automated metro like the DLR in London, or NFC cards like pretty much any other metro in Europe.
He's exaggerating. Or is just making silly assumptions.
I don't know about Germany, but when I was considering moving from the UK to California, the total tax difference I was looking at was 1-2 percentage points at my (high) salary level. Even compared to Norway which hardly has the reputation as a low tax country, my then salary and consumption would only lead to 3-4 percentage point more tax. This was when I included the amount of VAT I'd pay on average (even the 25% VAT on most goods and services in Norway contribute surprisingly little, as of course for starters this is on your net income, and secondly peoples largest expenses tends to be things like rent or mortgage payments etc., so the amount of your salary that actually goes on stuff taxed at the max VAT rates in Europe ends up fairly small).
Even compared with Belgium (which has one of the highest all-in tax rates in the world - well above Germany as far as I remember) California taxes would be well above half more most people.
The US in general isn't nearly as low-tax as some people would like to believe. I seem to remember that e.g. in OECD rankings the US comes pretty close to the top in the worldwide rankings and middle of the road when looking at developed countries.
Of course, if you cherry-pick tax brackets and assume a state with no state income tax, and suitably low sales taxes and lack of other local taxes in the US I'm sure you can find somewhere really cheap, though most of them will likely be places few people wants to live.
Either you are full of BS or have plain no idea what you are talking about. Did you ever look at your pay or earnings statements? I know what they are in both the USA, France, Germany, and the UK and I can assure you that income taxes for middle class income earners is significantly lower in the US on average.
> I know what they are in both the USA, France, Germany, and the UK and I can assure you that income taxes for middle class income earners is significantly lower in the US on average.
For France and Germany you are right, but that was not something I disputed. I specifically pointed out that I did not know the specifics of Germany, but disputed the claim that German taxes are twice those of California.
Yes, I've looked at my earnings statements. In detail. And no, my tax burdens have not been all that different.
I can't speak to your experience, as it obviously depends on what tax brackets you end up in and what deductions you get, and for the US it depends massively on where in the US you live. Specifically to the argument at hand, tax levels in California are amongst the highest in the US, which also makes them amongst the highest in the world, given that the US average places the US as a whole amongst the highest taxation countries in the world.
As for the averages, Germany and France near the very top world wide.
According to the OECD numbers for 2014, they're 3rd and 5th in highest tax burden respectively. But even then, Germany ends up at slightly below 50%, and the US as a whole slightly above 30% when combining income tax, employer and employee social security contributions.
Given that California tax rates are far above US average, with both a payroll tax and being one of only 3 states as far as I can tell that have state income taxes that goes beyond 10%, I can safely stand by my statement that the claim that it was an exaggeration to claim that German taxes are twice California taxes without even bothering to dig up the actual averages for California.
In terms of the UK, fully loaded taxes are actually lower than the US average according to the OECD (US was for 2014 ranked as having the 24th highest taxes in the world, UK 26th; and since I mentioned Norway: 21st)
What's interesting, the speed record for conventional bullet trains is 574.8 km/h, about 30km/h less! This was a TGV train, largely unmodified (although they did increase the tension in the caternary). The wiki article about the speed record is interesting:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TGV_world_speed_record
Makes you wonder whether the overhead of maglev is really worth it.
Actually, the TGV record was set by a specially-rebuilt train set that was heavily customized -- and the test crew reportedly couldn't stand/walk around the instrument car at speeds over 500km/h due to vibration. (The track they ran the test on was newly-laid and not yet open to regular traffic: they had to replace most of the overhead cables from the stretch where the train hit maximum speed due to arcing and shock waves.)
The big difference is that the TGV record set pretty much an upper limit on steel-wheel speed -- horrible vibration, and the wheel rims were close to supersonic, which would have led to more shock waves if they'd pushed it faster. Similarly, Formula One cars go a lot faster than regular road vehicles, but you wouldn't want to commute to the office in one! Whereas this maglev test demonstrated a technology that would be comfortably usable at this speed.
Interestingly, the TGV record was broken by an unmodified Velaro-D train recently. Standard rolling stock, used the week before for normal transport, used a week after for normal transport.
Are you sure? I'm not finding anything about this.
The TGV record is about half the speed of sound, which means the wheel rims are bordering on supersonic, so it's not a simple thing to talk about exceeding it.
Why would the wheel rims rotate at twice the speed of the train? If the train advanced along the track 1m, surely the part of the wheel in contact with the track must also have moved 1m?
I think the idea is that the top of the wheel is basically super sonic compared to the ground. This has to be the case: the train is connected to the middle of the wheel at speed, the bottom of the wheel is going 0 so long as it's not slipping, so the top of the wheel is screaming along at near-sonic speeds.
It's an odd diagram to draw out, as that result is pretty counter-intuitive.
Pretty sure you're mistaken. The Velaro-D reached 403km/h without modifications[0], the Velaro-E did the same back in 2006. That's not the untuned record either, these belong to China's CRH380BL.
This doesn't make any sense. The record is around 575 km/h. The speed of sound is 1225km/h. How would the wheel rim be travelling faster than the train? The while rim rotates 1m for every 1m the train travels, surely?
The top of the wheel is moving faster than the train. If the contact point between the wheel and rail is not slipping, the relative velocity between the wheel at that point and the rail is 0.
To maintain that condition, the top of the wheel has to travel at twice the speed of the train. Imagine a point on the wheel. Each time the train moves ones circumference forward, that point also makes a circular trip of 1 circumference.
So at the top, when the motion of the point relative to the train is full forward, the net velocity is twice the train. At the bottom, when the motion of the point relative to the train is full backward, the net velocity is 0.
I'd imagine that the wear on rolling stock and tracks as well as the power lost to friction makes Maglev worth it if you actually want to operate close to such speeds.
I'm not convinced. Some conventional rail operates at close to 400km/h today. This will operate at 500km/h - in 15 years. But it's completely incompatible with existing infrastructure, and thus doesn't allow incremental updates of either the infrastructure or the trains (i.e. no service in the mean time, and no ability to reuse existing tracks and stations in cities).
Then consider the amount of research that's been put into this, and the complex problems that needed to be solved -- it would probably cheaper to invest research into track that allows higher speeds with less maintenance (again incremental improvements possible).
Then consider that most of the speed from this maglev comes from the geometry of the track. It's all tunnels and bridges. That's a giant investment needed to get to those speeds; and conventional rail with that track geometry could be similarly fast.
I guess the usual counterpoint is: they have to build a new track anyway (the existing one is getting saturated). Building a rail track or a maglev track costs about the same (almost all the cost is making the tunnels), and the maglev track is better, so why not go with the maglev.
It was discussed a little bit for the new high speed train line in Britain, but rejected for the reasons you state in your first paragraph. But Japan seems much less worried about reusing trains (different lines are usually operated by different companies with different rolling stock). And somehow they were able to get this project funded even though it will be many years until first service---maybe they just are more competent than the west when it comes long-term investments? :) So maybe the trade-off came out differently there...
Maybe it's a tech-fetish.
The Germans tried the same thing with Transrapid for many years (between Hamburg and Berlin), but just ended up upgrading conventional rail.
Maglev is patent encumbered and really only implemented by a solitary Japanese company with close ties to the Japanese government. The government wants to give you a loan if you buy the product, etc. It a dying concept, much like the concorde was for air. The limits, cost, complexity, etc aren't worth it and the market has been choosing against it for decades.
I think I've read somewhere that it's possible to run trains of steel rails really fast, but doing so creates lots of wear, so it would not be economical to do it routinely. That the big advantage of the maglev technology is not the absolute top speed, but the fact that the maintenance is cheap even at high speeds.
But it has to be economical: if the cost of wear over the life time of the system is less than the initial cost of building maglev, then you're still ahead.
Commercial aircraft travel in ground-speed terms, around 350-500 MpH on average [0] (sometimes faster with wind behind them). This travels on a "normal" day up to 313 MpH which is nothing to sniff at.
You should also take into account how long you'll spend at the airport (e.g. security, checking/unchecking bags, etc) and taxiing/queuing on/off of the runway, and how long it takes it get up to altitude (aircraft travel slower while ascending).
Even still an aircraft likely is faster than this. But this could theoretically be cheaper than an aircraft, in particular as fuel costs continue to rise (and after the high building costs have been repaid).
These might be wider deployed if land wasn't already "owned" and using Eminent domain to seize it wasn't so politically unpopular. Plus every road you cross either requires a bridge (expensive), tunnel (more expensive), or crossing (dangerous).
> . . . in particular as fuel costs continue to rise.
The long term trend is for a megaWatt (in any form) to get cheaper (in real terms) and less carbon intensive. There is every reason to believe that energy will be cheaper 5, 10, 50, 100 years from now.
The article by Kiyotaka Matsuda in Bloomberg Business[1] makes the important point that "Whether any of this makes a shred of economic sense is another matter." Japan has a declining population, and the level of investment required to build a maglev train line is enormous. Countries with growing populations have decided against building high-speed rail lines, and Japan does not appear to have any export market for this technology. Even the first phase of Japan's proposed maglev train line project, running from Tokyo to Nagoya if built, would not be completed until 2027.
Imagine NYC to Boston in 40 minutes and the kind of boost it can bring to the innovative power in the region. It will be truly a silicon alley. And imagine two innovative centers in the country competing with each other.
Unfortunately this kind of decisions are not made by innovative people.
They are certainly cool pieces of technology but also expensive ones. The development of the German Transrapid began in 1969, it was declared ready for use in 1991 and then no planned route turned out to be cost efficient. Wouldn't China have bought one there would probably still be none in use. Even the test track in Germany is no longer open to the public since an accident a couple of years ago.
Often people are disappointed when they visit Japan to find that it isn't as technologically advanced as they had dreamed, and I do agree partially, but whenever I discuss it with friends who also live here we always agree: the trains are amazing. Even local trains (in Tokyo) come very often, are fast, and are extremely quiet. But I always look forward to riding the Shinkansen. If you're lucky you can even get a great view of Mount Fuji.
Contrast this with the Caltrain that chugs diesel and barely goes at 80 mph taking over 1 hour and 40 minutes to get from San Francisco to San Jose (the hubs of modern day technology). At this point the only advantage that Caltrain brings to the bay area is that you don't have to worry about parking in San Francisco.
It's sad that in the US, train connections between major living centers isn't even a federal priority. Granted, the US is VERY large and we're talking about much larger investments than in Japan, but our economy is a crapton bigger as well.
I used to be all about public transportation and trains, but I cannot reconcile that anymore with advancement in technology. It simply does not make sense to me anymore to try and build high speed rail on the ground, on fixed "rails" in order to not even get close to even slow airplane speeds.
With the roll-out of more sophisticated air traffic control systems that will allow denser traffic, higher frequency landing / take-offs, I don't see the sense in fixed systems like rail.
It obviously makes a lot more sense in places like Japan or even parts of Europe, but in the USA, where you need to traverse huge swaths of uninhabitable and even inhospitable and unpredictable land, it simply makes no sense.
Take Texas for example. All the idiots that have been moving to Texas from self-absorbed and myopic cesspools of self-importance keep crying about public transportation and high speed rail to connect the San Antonio, Dallas, Houston triangle; but no one wants to address the question as to why. You could and already can travel those paths by air and it will only get faster and cheaper with the improved air traffic control system when fully rolled out.
Do we think that high speed rail will enjoy the freedom that current AMTRAK does where you just drive up, hop on the train and off you go? No! You will have to also go through the TSA security bullshit and you will still have to go to specific locations to get on. It just makes no sense.
I would much rather see some sort of automated flight between regular airports on regional hops like the Texas triangle.
Edit: ... If at all. Something somewhat related that has baffled me for years now. Is why do people, especially in the tech industry need to travel so much? Of all people, why has the tech industry not solved the remote working issue? It's like we are using steam power to make electricity. Again, it makes no sense.
> It simply does not make sense to me anymore to try and build high speed rail on the ground, on fixed "rails" in order to not even get close to even slow airplane speeds.
Planes have higher max speeds, but they're subject to weather delays and other issues that bring their average speeds down well into maglev territory.
> With the roll-out of more sophisticated air traffic control systems that will allow denser traffic, higher frequency landing / take-offs, I don't see the sense in fixed systems like rail.
Significant limits remain - planes simply can't takeoff/land too close together due to things like wake turbulence, unloading a plane through a couple doors and jetways takes much longer than a train, etc. The weather issue is a big factor here, as well - a thunderstorm in Chicago can disrupt the entire nation due to connecting flights.
> Do we think that high speed rail will enjoy the freedom that current AMTRAK does where you just drive up, hop on the train and off you go?
You are not thinking objectively, it's quite obvious. Not only will weather impact the operation and speed of a maglev just as much if not more considering that high winds and / or blistering heat can significantly impact the train and track.
And if you think that a few storms disrupting the air transportation network is a problem because some idiots thought it was a good idea to make Chicago a hub then you are not thinking about the problem correctly. What you are describing is a process and business problem. Maybe north and north east airports should not be hub airports like any even half witted person would realize, and no matter what, I don't think you could even pay for all the rail lines that would need to be built in order to serve the same number of passengers between the same number of destinations as you can flexibly adapt to with air travel.
For example, Southwest started direct flights from DC to Austin two years ago because the demand was so large. You couldn't even get the plans together in the same amount of time it took to plan, permit, coordinate, and implement DC-AUS flights, which are also a connection from some other airport on top of it.
> Not only will weather impact the operation and speed of a maglev just as much if not more considering that high winds and / or blistering heat can significantly impact the train and track.
Planes are frequently grounded/delayed by weather systems trains would have no trouble transiting, particularly thunderstorms.
> I don't think you could even pay for all the rail lines that would need to be built in order to serve the same number of passengers between the same number of destinations as you can flexibly adapt to with air travel.
Once again, you pretend like this doesn't already exist throughout Europe and Japan already.
Planes, even small ones, require a significant amount of maintenance and the fuel is not cheap either. Also, qualifying and paying someone to operate a vehicle that is essentially constrained to one dimension of movement is far cheaper than doing the same for a vehicle that can move in all 3 dimensions or even 2 (like a bus.) That's one of the reasons why fully-automated trains have been practical and in operation for many decades already: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_train_operation#Recor...
Back in the 70s, you could rock up at the airport twenty minutes before your flight left, jump on with minimal hassle, and cruise along at 600mph to your destination. Now, you need to endure two hours of having your fingernail clippers confiscated so that you can fly at 500mph to save on fuel costs.
That seems to be the true advantage of rail travel. As it said on the loudspeaker in Berlin HBF last time I was there: "Please try to arrive on the platform at least five minutes before your train is scheduled to depart."
Sadly, I bet the way we'll end up equalizing this will be that somebody will eventually bomb a TGV and we'll have to start doing the two hour confiscate-your-kids'-apple-juice routine at the train station too.