this post was submitted on 07 Jan 2024
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It's fun to think about this stuff, but like the YouTube comments discuss, this is not going to be a practical solution. The cost:benefit ratio just isn't there.
My personal opinion is that continued electrification of existing transport modalities is probably going to be the defining feature of future transportation developments for the next century. The biggest issue is battery energy density, but I'd be shocked if things like solid state batteries didn't start coming online within the next decade or two. There's just so much investment going on here right now.
So obviously things like electric cars and buses on existing roadways is going to continue growing. Full self driving will eventually occur. Convoys of high speed electric vehicles traveling down highways will basically do everything that high speed rail is supposed to do, but without the need to build high speed rail. Like by the time a transcontinental high speed rail system would be built (50 years?) It would be obsolete.
That's not even taking into account how the enormous investment and innovation fueled by the electric car/truck/bus industry is also going to enable electric airplanes. Being able to fly a couple dozen people to local air strips a couple hundred miles apart will be a true transportation revolution. You'll be able to connect up all these regional locations without any significant infrastructure and at aircraft speeds and for relatively low cost.
High speed rail is amazing for high density locations like Europe, Japan and China. But for the USA it's a much tougher sell. And with upcoming developments in electric vehicles it's likely to be obsolete by the time you finish building it. It's sort of like trying to convince a big African country with poor telecom infrastructure to build out a national network of expensive high speed fiber optic cables instead of going for something like wireless cell towers or just switching to satellite constellations like Starlink in another decade.
East coast united states has similar population density to most of europe.
It's just out west we have a lot of empty land.
Yeah, Amtrak's most profitable line is the Boston-DC NE corridor. Not that profitability is the end all be all of transit, but it speaks to the value gained vs value spent.
Yes that makes an transcontinental high speed rail very impractical.
I'm not disagreeing with that, but high speed rail from Boston to Miami would be extremely practical. Efficient, fast, convient travel along that corridor reducing dependence on cars for city to city travel. And the area has both the demand and density to support such projects.
And while its impractical now, if it was built to cheapen regional travel in the region it could grow to high use spurning economic development.
I'd love to take a train at a reasonable pace from near to DC to my family in Pittsburgh, or to visit New York.
I might even enjoy a cross country trek to the rockies for skiing on a train, but it's never going to be an option.
I would love that. I personally love riding high speed rail. The problem is that it's too damn expensive to build in the USA. The cost : benefit ratio just doesn't pencil out.
Even the profitable Acela line barely qualifies as high speed rail because they can't handle upgrading all the rail and dealing with legacy infrastructure issues.
It would be amazing if they could fix that and extend it down the coast to Miami. It would be amazing if they could build a high speed rail line from NY to SF. I would totally ride that. Unfortunately I just don't think it's ever going to happen.
The cost to benefit looks way better if you think long term. Especially with climate change on the horizon to compete with planes but emission free.
One of the major problems for upgrading lines is straitening the route, and people fight the emniment domain way harder than they do for roads.
With Brightline in Florida and Amtrak upgrades in Virginia and even to Georgia, I’m actually starting to be optimistic Boston to Miami will happen. Eventually. Sadly, not in my lifetime, but eventually.
So far, every place I see even basic rail service, it only builds interest. People want it, and it’s finally getting a little funding. Once people get it, it will be tough to take away. It will grow.
At the current rate, it will take quite a few decades. I can dream of a relaxing ride to Florida in my retirement, but maybe the next generation will be able to actually do it
Hell, we may even get high speed rail centered on Chicago, expanded out to meet east coast rail. Can you imagine the entire eastern half the country connected?