this post was submitted on 01 Oct 2023
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fun fact. modern planes consume ~3-4l per 100 passengers per km or 3-4l per passenger per 100km.
efficient ICE cars consume ~6l per passenger per 100km.
add to that, that there's basically no good alternative to fast very long distance or cross-continent transport
The alternative is stop traveling such huge distances all the time.
Other than public transportation and filling up the cars with people, instead of having one vehicle per person.
Distances that require a flight are far too common here in the US at least, it's kind of unavoidable
A lot of those flights could be replaced with high speed rail. Maybe not New York to LA, but a lot of people live in the cities in the northeast and travel between those cities would be very feasible at reasonable travel times with high speed rail.
Okay let me just lobby the government to build long distance high speed rail before I take my trips.
High speed rail makes more sense for sure, but it's not available in most of the country. There's only two stretches in the US, in the northeast corridor and surprisingly in Florida
I know how pitiful our rail networks are. I take Amtrak regularly. It’s faster to drive. It shouldn’t be, but it is. Obviously I’m not talking about today, but building improved rail infrastructure over the next decade is very realistic and a worthwhile investment. Unfortunately the investment Amtrak has gotten isn’t enough to modernize our rail network, and a lot of that money is being used to improve privately owned rail lines that Amtrak leases for their passenger service.
My point was that the US doesn’t have distances that are insurmountable that can only be traveled via plane. It’s an investment issue.
That would require investment in infrastructure, and our govt would rather get us into another 9 forever wars than do such a thing.