i leik trains

Fuck. I don't know. It sure would be cool if we had high speed links between major cities, and as-fast-as-possible links everywhere else. After traveling in Yurp and Glorious Nippon, it frustrates me how shitty transportation is in the US.

Of course, I had to walk sometimes--Americans in general would never submit to such humiliation.

>HSR in the US

not in your lifetime, socialist scum

>>257627
In what sense is high speed rail "sustainable"?

before building inter-city trains, the city and its surroundings must first have their own rail transportation
metro trains inside the city
commuter trains to and through suburbia
regional trains to regional areas
streetcars on the road in the urban area/inner-suburbs

If a city doesn't have any or not enough then how do you get to the high-speed train and what do you do when you arrive?
>>257642
what is a road lanes carrying capacity
what is a rail tracks carrying capacity
is it sustainable to keep expanding freeways and highways to keep pace with congestion - and fueling that congestion with a finite resource and generating toxins and pollutants as a result

>>257645
Rapid Transit systems are for congestion, not high speed rail.

>>257642
High speed rail requires less energy to move people between cities than any other form of transport.
They do require more maintenance a year to run than roads but it's more labour intensive than resource intensive.

>>257627

It seems to be the most sustainable in terms of BTU/(passenger*mile). Unfortunately, the only HSR in the country only runs between Boston and DC, and the pantograph lines in NJ and PA can only sustain speeds of 80mph due to their cable connector strength, which cripples its average speed to 75mph. If these were upgraded, the Acela could open up to 150mph in 2 more zones, and maintain higher speeds than regular trains on given track because of its tilting carriages.

Since it's the only profitable line Amtrak has running right now, it's more likely to get capital improvements and expansion of the line. To expand HSR further, however, Amtrak has 3 choices: electrify hundreds of miles of track at great expense, import British diesel-powered HSTs, or have new high-speed diesel locos and carriages designed specifically for Acela service. All of these are pretty expensive, although the latter two will be much lower capital overhead.

>>257647
that's not true

>>257645
>If a city doesn't have any or not enough then how do you get to the high-speed train and what do you do when you arrive?

You kill yourself.

What do you do when you arrive is the stupidest question because nobody asks that when it comes to air travel. They rent cars or have someone pick them up.

On HSR, however, you are going to arrive in the city center. Take Los Angeles for instance. When you arrive at LAX, you can rent a car or have someone pick you up. At Los Angeles Union Station, there are bus and rail lines radiating outward in all directions. You can take the subway to Hollywood, Metrolink to the suburbs, light rail to Pasadena or East LA and buses pretty much anywhere. In a decade the subway will serve West Los Angeles.

So this question is retarded.

>>257655

Try to maintain your rails, then you will get a much better stat. Altho, bikes may be an unfair argument.

>>257648
its not just elderly pantograph, its a whole host of issues
elderly bridges
tracks too close together (prevents pendalino tilting mechanism)
level crossings
etc
and most importantly of all it is simply not a High-Speed Railway thus it has curves and grades too great for high speed operation and other traffic uses it, state passenger and private freight, because Amtrak doesn't own the track it operates services on (and yet rightards accuse it of being a monopoly lol)
So the 245 miles from Paris to Lyon takes a TGV an hour and 57 minutes
While the 230 miles from Boston to NYC takes the Acela three and a half hours
The TGV operates on purpose built high-speed railways, Acela operates on a mess.
>You kill yourself.
In Europe or Asia you can catch a regional or commuter or metro train to the terminal and right there on another platform is the High-Speed Inter-City Train, and when you arrive at your destination immediately use that locations rail as well
This provides a major advantage over flying with the airport isolated outside the city due to its land requirements
But with most American cities having little or no public transportation, one of the major advantages is lost and you have to drive or get a taxi to the terminal making it just as frustrating as flying - and flying isn't asking you to spend tens of billions of dollars in infrastructure so a lot of people are going to be turned away.
>At Los Angeles Union Station, there are bus and rail lines radiating outward in all directions.
L.A. has only two subway train lines with limited coverage, the rest of their rail is lightrail which is the wrong application for that mode of public transportation, and don't even bother with buses
And where are the rental cars in the middle of a dense city? Airport has the land to provide that and/or long term parking, railway terminal does not.

>The carrying capacity of a freeway lane is roughly 1800 vehicles per hour, or 2000 people per hour given average vehicle occupancy of 1.11 passengers. A typical six-lane freeway therefore carries up to 12,000 people per hour in both directions.
>A double-track suburban railway, meanwhile, can easily support one train movement every three minutes in each direction without straining its capacity. A six-car train can carry around 1000 passengers before reaching crush conditions. Thus the rail line can carry at least 40,000 people per hour in both directions, and perhaps more depending on the signalling system and vehicle design.

And then there are the fossil fuels being burned to power the electrical grid versus the cars burning oil - even if its a dirty old coal plant its still going to be a lot more efficient use of such resources
And there is no reason it has to be a fossil fuel power station, it could be hydro or geo or solar-thermal or nuclear

>>257659
>those trains will be filled to the brim.
and what of the many locations with little or no public transportation infrastructure
one halfarsed lightrail route a few miles long in the middle of the gentrified downtown does not a railway network make

>>257648
>implying that is true at all
Actualy, the Erie lines can handle speeds up to 100 MPH, the NEC has a current speed restrction to 85 and 75 due to track repairs (winter snow damaged parts of the wood, but normally at Elizabeth, the MAX speed is 100, not 80 you lying homosexual.) Existing NJ transit trains can go at 125 between Princeston and Trenton however they are limited as the new ALP-46As are not tested at 125 MPH, and are limited at 100 MPH.

Also, I wonder how the hell like I have pointed out, will you demolish billions in real estate, currently New Jersey is hyper dense, and to make HSR useful, you would have to destroy wetlands, and houses, which isn't going to happen any time soon. Upgrading existing tracks is cheaper and possible

>And where are the rental cars in the middle of a dense city?
Whilst I have never be to the US, every large city I have visited has had car rental places in the inner city, usually in multi-level car parks.

Also, build one the others will come. You cannot just build everything to make a whole transit system great over night, but that should not be an excuses to start on parts of it now. If you build a good metro system they could complain they still need cars to get around the burbs, build a good commuter system they could complain about the lack of inner city transport, build anything in the city they would complain they still need a car to go regional. No matter what you do they will complain they still need the car to do something and use it as an excuse why you should do nothing.

>>257676
clearing land for a railway doesn't require near as much effort as for freeway, or airport
and yes making upgrades to existing railways is all well and good to improve commuter services and 'Regional Fast Rail' services but it should be done with eyes wide open - not confusing it with high speed rail
>>257677
starting on the city and the suburbs and the regions rail first before the inter-city would make much better sense than doing it the other way around
metro/commuter is basically the same just a matter of where it is and frequency - extend metro lines to suburbs or add subways snaking around the centre of the commuter
then of course there are streetcars
and regionals

>>257655
Your figures don't account for capacity. Average car use may be 1.57 passengers, but average car capacity is around 5-6; whereas average bus use of 8.8 compares with a typical capacity of around 60. They also fail to account for changes in volume - you don't tend to get increased loadings with cars.

>>257658
I wouldn't say it was retarded, more like counterproductive. High-speed rail can in itself be a driver for demand. A city may lack mass transit because of a lack of demand - people are instead driving to places outside the city or to the airport. Having a good inter-city rail system may make public transport more useful, and a good public transport network makes access to inter-city rail a more attractive proposition.

That said, European networks embrace the car in equal measure. BR set up a number of "parkway" stations for railheading, and you can bet your bottom dollar that very few people are buying tickets *to* Ebbsfleet or Haute-Picardie.

>>257676
It's called "compulsory purchase". Otherwise known as "We're having your land. Here's 5 rupees, now fuck off."

You take the cheapest and easiest options. In the city, you upgrade existing lines to handle the trains - you don't need to buy new land, and you get the bonus of easy connections to existing networks. Out of the city, you build new lines up to high specifications - you don't disrupt the existing traffic, and the trains will be able to breach the all-important 200km/hr barrier to achieve the time savings. An ideal HSR in the northeast would still come out of Boston South and New York Penn. By maintaining existing lines, you can bring in the time reductions in stages, which gives you visible progress. Journey time from Boston to DC goes from 7 hours to 6 hours to 5:15 to 4:45, etc.

>>257715
>>257685
Highway construction has been stalled for all but a few connectors (there is a reason I-95 breaks, and that is one small town saying lol no, leading to the clusterfuck that is the NJ Turnpike - PA connection system. If Highway construction which was planned for 50 years is being stopped by small towns, do you and

>>257715 think it will be possible. Also, they did that in the 1940s and 50s, now its racism because HSR ideal pathways happen to go through ethnic neighborhoods. Enjoy having to explain why you blew up the Spanish town for a trainline that they can't afford instead of a new bus route which people can. Then there is the environmental issue, with brownfields, wetlands, all sorts of fun fun things which a NEC line through maryland would find!

>>257715
>>257715
>>257685
Highway construction has been stalled for all but a few connectors (there is a reason I-95 breaks, and that is one small town saying lol no, leading to the clusterfuck that is the NJ Turnpike - PA connection system. If Highway construction which was planned for 50 years is being stopped by small towns, do you and

>>257715 think it will be possible. Also, they did that in the 1940s and 50s, now its racism because HSR ideal pathways happen to go through ethnic neighborhoods. Enjoy having to explain why you blew up the Spanish town for a trainline that they can't afford instead of a new bus route which people can. Then there is the environmental issue, with brownfields, wetlands, all sorts of fun fun things which a NEC line through maryland would find!

>>257734
>Then there is the environmental issue, with brownfields, wetlands, all sorts of fun fun things which a NEC line through maryland would find!
Exactly. Like the ICC clusterfuck.

>>257705
>A city may lack mass transit because of a lack of demand - people are instead driving to places outside the city or to the airport.
how can you demand something that doesn't exist?
there isn't any demand because it ain't there, it ain't there because of a conscious effort in planning to go with many massive road projects and no rail

>>257762
>how can you demand something that doesn't exist?
Pretty easily, it turns out.

>> OP is implying that any mass transit is "sustainable."

>>257786
ya think cave man was wishing he had tv and guns?
if it doesn't exist how do you choose it?
if it doesn't exist in your area and you have no experience with it how can you make the arguments for its ability?
>>257817
>The carrying capacity of a freeway lane is roughly 1800 vehicles per hour, or 2000 people per hour given average vehicle occupancy of 1.11 passengers. A typical six-lane freeway therefore carries up to 12,000 people per hour in both directions.
>A double-track suburban railway, meanwhile, can easily support one train movement every three minutes in each direction without straining its capacity. A six-car train can carry around 1000 passengers before reaching crush conditions. Thus the rail line can carry at least 40,000 people per hour in both directions, and perhaps more depending on the signalling system and vehicle design.

One word: YES!!!

>>257819
>if it doesn't exist how do you choose it?
Again, pretty fucking easy. lrn2/gap in the market/

>>257819

I am a pro-rail fag, but "sustainable" can mean ridership numbers or financial numbers, which can be the same thing but not always. I don't presume rail to be sustainable financially, but useful/sustained by use of the public (especially once they get over their butthurt car culture) is viable as a function.

I just LOL at folks who bitch about rail not being "sustainable" and requiring subsidies when highways and airlines are somehow absolved from such standards.

I believe quality of life projects aren't suppose to make millionz (and if they did, what a different world we'd live in.) But, the reality of the question is can the insane investment in rail of any kind be justified by a short or long term use? Yes, but folks that want to apply regular ol' johnny spitshine profit/loss depreciation accounting to it don't get it.

>>257663

Why are you disregarding the commuter rail lines that Metrolink operates? Why are you disregarding that Los Angeles is in the middle of a massive push to expand the rail system?

Los Angeles' Rapid Bus network is also nothing to sneeze at. The average speed of the rapid bus system is 17.8 MPH. The average speed on the New York subway system is 17.4 MPH. Paris' Metro isn't much better at 21.7 MPH.

Light rail lines don't have to be slow necessarily. The Gold Line between Union Station and Pasadena has an average speed of 27.4 MPH.

Claims that bus and light rail are inherently slow are without merit, unless you want to concede that New York's subway system is also a slow and decrepit piece of shit that decays more and more with each passing day.

So is HSR suppose to bridge the gap between car travel distance and plane travel distance? Or is it suppose to replace cars and planes?

>>257860

It is meant to replace short-hop flights (i.e. LA-San Francisco or Boston-New York). There is also some induced demand due to the fact that trains arrive closer to city centers and security is assumed to be less stringent than flying (unlikely, since Amtrak already does random but rare pat downs of riders).

In any case, it doesn't replace cars or planes. It's just another transportation tool in the box that has its pros and cons.

>>257854
>I am a pro-rail fag, but "sustainable" can mean ridership numbers or financial numbers, which can be the same thing but not always.
what sort of financial numbers
its a major piece of infrastructure, tens of billions of dollars invested in it to build and start
like anything else like that it is a long term low yield investment
now if you arbitrarily decide that its gotta be turning a profit by the first financial quarter then maybe not
>>257858
Issue ain't speed, what are you on about?
>Light rail
Light rail is just streetcars/trams and should be used as such, trying to make it a cheap substitute for trains will either see it under utilized wasting the investment OR demand outstripping its capacity
>>257860
no one ever suggests public transportation replace cars, that is a black & white false premise straw man
for 100 to say 400 or 500 miles High-Speed Rail can be quite effective, look at the figure cited here >>257663 for a 245 mile trip done by the train in an hour and 57 minutes.

>>257866

Light rail can be anything you want it to be. It doesn't have to operate in the street. There is a fully-grade separated light rail line in Los Angeles that travels at speeds up to 65 MPH. It serves highly transit dependent but relatively low density resident areas so it doesn't need to have the capacity of a heavy rail line.

>>257869
try using it to substitute for proper trains and one of the following will happen:
it is lightly used, making all that effort building subways a waste (German Stadhtbahn)
patronage demand outstrips capacity and due to infrastructure limitations you can not expand - in hindsight you should have built trains (L.A. Blue Line, London Dockland Light Rail)

For best results treat it the same as tram/streetcar: street running, some grade separation on highway median strip or lightrailway where perhaps appropriate, stops 500-1,000 meters apart, COMPLEMENTING a railway network not trying to replace it

>>257869
>It serves highly transit dependent but relatively low density resident areas so it doesn't need to have the capacity of a heavy rail line.
unless more than a handful of people want to catch it

>>257891
here in Melbourne we have 6-carriage EMU capable of 1,000 people going from our city centre out to the suburban/rural fringe
starting from the end of the lines and going into the city some are now full after just a few stops
this is how commuters work in the world

>>257894
and trams on the street in the urban area/inner-suburbs

>>257891

The Blue Line should have been heavy rail, there is no doubt about that. Not necessarily entirely underground, but the portions in DTLA and Long Beach should have been underground.

But you must also understand that back then and still today transit funds are scarce and it would take a heroic effort to make those kinds of projects commonplace.

But light rail has its place. I could not imagine the Gold Line, Green Line as anything but light rail. Same with Expo which is simply recreating the old Pacific Electric line but with more modern technology.

>>257894

Well, LA has that but they are pushed and pulled by FRA-compliant diesel trains. Everybody seems to forget about heavy rail Metrolink lines when they start ranting about light rail. All Metrolink needs is shorter headways and some double tracking and it would be a great system.

>>257908
surface, elevated, open trench, subway
whatever fits best
and light rail works best when you treat it the same as streetcar/tram

>>257910
diesel locomotive are for regional services
not commuter to & through suburb

>>257914
37419 would like a word with you.

>>257925
I don't care, the right tool for the right job
locomotive or DMU is for regional where obviously you wouldn't put up overhead/lay third rail through the rural countryside due to cost vs demand
in the city and its suburbia you can and metro trains and commuter trains ought to be EMU
plus there is the noise which NIMBYs will just love

>>257954
Most noise is silent thanks to new Tier 2 EPA standards, and all trains have to lay on the horns due to tragic traffic accidents, so there is nothing tht isn't nosy anyway! (also in america, Suburbs are huge and go for hundreds of miles, so having the suburban train be a diesel push/pull from say LAST STOP: LIGHTHOUSETOWN to FIRST STOP, CITY DOWNTOWN is cost effective. It is only New York that is crazy enough to have transforming multi-engine train systems (Genesis, F8s, and that new DP motive power NJ Transit got commissioned which swap from electrical power to diesel modes.) Welcome to 100+ mile trainlines!

>>257955
>diesel engine
>no noise
wat

>>257914
A lot of places have Commuter services go through suburbs by the way, since it tends to be Commuters going from their houses in the middle of nowhere, to the inner city centers (I know, I am one of them),

>>257957
there are plenty of American cities and their surrounding suburbia and surrounding rural region beyond that with little or rail

Melbournes sprawling suburban commuter network explained
electric too bitches
only locomotives and DMU are for the bush

>>257958
and those are shitty cities, but rail technology is spreading, with Utah even having new diesel commuter technology (because why put electric lines in the middle of the fucking desert/sand flats if you don't run a coal plant) now in the Northeast, (lol boston and your FPH40s, and your MPIs) we have Diesel Commuter trains. Carail is pretty much this model, Chicago has this model, and even the highly electric northeast has the 150 mile trains from middle of nowhere/rich people towns (Long Island) to New York, but they are bizarre diesel to 3rd rail trains.

>>257956
Not every train is those SCREAMERS OH GOD MY EARS unless they are idling for no apparent reason, with new quieter engines they sound more like trucks or busses than the huge SCREAMERS of the 80s and 70s.

>>257959
also melbourne's electrification is smalltime, only 16 miles electrified? Ha! Talk to me when you have 100 miles of electric line, and the last 100 are diesel. And you say Melbourne is sprawling, its less than the City Subway system which is tiny!

>>257959
Melbournes trams, complement the trains not replace them - you get off at a railway station and walk outside and theres a tram for you to continue your journey
It is predominately on the road, this is fine for the most part except some older narrow streets that have just one lane either side of the tracks - and those lanes are taken up by curbside parking forcing all the traffic onto the tram tracks! Any effort to enact clearways is met with angry Local Traders Association convinced that one car parked out the front for x-hours represents more customers than a tram going past and NIMBYs complaining as usual - never mind that the whole reason the shopping stripped developed in the first place because of the trams.
Some newer extensions and road rebuilds are grade separated into highway median strip, and the two routes in St Kilda and Port Melbourne are built on converted railways (tracks converted from broad to standard gauge, pantograph from 1500 to 600 volts DC, connected to tram network, etc) - might have been a good idea in 1987 but today with the redevelopment of the South Melbourne area they are sorely taxed by the passenger demand and in hindsight one of the railways should have been retained.
But this can't be done because the bridge and railways on the other side of the Yarra River from Flinders St Station have all been demolished to make way for the Southbank redevelopment and Crown Casino.
Another example of Lightrail not working as a substitute for trains.

Oh and its also the largest network in the world, 245km bitches.

>>257962
Subway was here, Trams are an inferior way of transportation. Grade Separation Supremecy. Maximum Speed is greater, carrying ability is greater. Trams are just slightly faster busses if anything. Also, DC? AC is a better power means imho, but I'm an AC believer. Also though, why not build a tunnel. This is why tunnels are best, surface transportation is inherently limited to Q, and that is why people who support trams that don't have their own right of way are dumb. (like yourself)

>>257961
used to be electrified to Traralgon which is 160km away with V/Line operating electric locomotives
Since it was the only regional line electrified there was quite a bit of cost to this, and people out in the countryside could never figure out that being electric there was no noise so there were a lot level crossing accidents through the years
Dismantled in the 1990s

>>257964
Why does Australia have our F8/E8 models, fuck those shits are like .. reallly old. You could have had horns though, Laying on the horn really lets the people know its a train

Diesel trains suck when it comes to acceleration. which is bad for local lines with many stops. Maybe I'm a bit biased here, since the only diesel lines around here used DB class 628 cars until recently, which have an extremly bad acceleration.

>>257963
>Subway was here, Trams are an inferior way of transportation.
streetcars/trams are not trains, you can have both subways and trams. How do I multi-modal?
Plenty of European cities do so, Pragues a good example with both a metro network and extensive tram network.
Anyway look at the German Stadtbahns
they spent the 1960s-1980s converting their trams to subways - all that cost and effort and its only lightly used, they've stopped and returned to ordinary trams
(or it can backfire in the opposite direction-the lightrail vehicles seeing too much demand)
>Speed
you're really obsessed with that aren't you? Why not have a fleet of Lamborgini taxis?
>Trams are just slightly faster busses if anything.
I've been on plenty of tram routes, they pick up much greater speed than buses a lot of the time. The there is greater capacity of modern low-floor articulated models, the buses exhaust and noise, short life span compared to rail vehicles, etc
>Also, DC?
Erm? electric public transportation always been DC bro
>(like yourself)
said the man with a limited understanding of public transportation

>>257965
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victorian_Railways_L_class_%28electric%29
>>257966
DMU fix this to a degree distributing torque throughout the vehicle not just a locomotive in front

>>257966

E.g. the diesel cars on the Wörth-Germersheim have been replaced by a tram-train line with electric trains, which stop twice as often (several stops in each village), but take pretty much the same time.

And since it's a tram-train, it doesn't people require to change trains anymore, which saves even more time.

>>257969
oh god don't bring Tram-Trains into this, these Americans have a hard enough time with these rail concepts

>>257966
you need MORE GEARS. MORE GEARS. Your engineering technolgy isn't good if it can't accelerate rapidly.

>>257967
That isn't a proper subway car though, a proper subway line is deditaced rail units, not just trams put in underground pits.

Though I think you and I are looking at diffrent systems with dirrent requirements. In the US, things are built to last long, and have some requirements whic hto outsiders seem strange. (If a bus here doesn't last for 20+ years, its thought of as a failure, for example).

Speed is important if you are to convince people to go away from their cars and move to train systems. Speed is king here in the states, where busses even speed. Though if you want to live, ride in a crown victoria cab, that thing can ride!

To be a success, public transportation here needs to be fast, safe, and cheaper than driving, otherwise it won't work and people will move back to cars. Most of your tram options here would be fighting with people driving , which offers a lot of personal freedom (that is big in America, so your options, like you pointed out with the store owner, would be fought that way.

>>257968
>distributing torque throughout the vehicle not just a locomotive in front

This is one of the problems the 628 has, sine only one of the two cars is powered.

>>257972
I am of course referring to the current love affair with lightrail. But as for using proper trains in subways as I said at the beginning:
>streetcars/trams are not trains, you can have both subways and trams. Plenty of European cities do so, Pragues a good example with both a metro network and extensive tram network.

once your tram/streetcar network is large enough you could use it to move freight inside your city relieving trucking

>>257967
Meh, the Stadtbahn systems seemed like a good idea in the 60s-80s. Mainly because normal trams back then were short cars, not much bigger than a bus, they were slow, since running in street traffic (or even on a single track against car traffic)
Whereas high-floor Stadtbahn/premetro/whatever was either segregated track or tunnel (fast) and large trains carrying over 400 people. Also wheelchair accessible, due to high platforms.

Obviously modern low-floor trams of today can do that, too, carry 400 people, run fast on segregated tracks or influence traffic lights.

Which is why modern low-floor tram systems in Germany are sometimes called Stadtbahn (e.g, Freiburg, pic) as well, mainly for marketing reasons. And the tram.trains in Karlsruhe are also called Stadtbahn, since there is no better term for that and Stadtbahn can be used for anything (kinda like the english word light rail)

>>257629
Yeah, we're not to keen on walking, are we?
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/19/the-pedometer-test-americans-take-fewer-steps/

>>257984
Every O/O (owner/operator)is going to literally murder you if you propose this, then the unions, then UPS, then Fedex, then the mexican haulers, in that order, lol! (also, trucks are cheap as shit, minimum wage labor + cheap truck = you are fighting against the bottom, the railroads use LTL to deal with trucks on a huge scale, because they can't do it on a small one!

>>258003
not up to them
up to the people of the city and inner-suburbs
do they want trucking going on? or an alternative
also, theres the effects of the trucks on the roads, the pollution, noise, exhaust, etc
>unions
since when were unions a problem in America? the last vestige of organized labor, public sector workers, are now under attack
But that said the tram workers in my city are unionized
>UPS, Fedex
who is to say it wouldn't be their freight trams running on the network? The CarGoTram in that picture is operated by Volkswagen to move goods between two plants in Dresden

>Is HSR the only form of sustainable transport for the US?

No. HSR would be slower than a flights. Not enough people would use them. Unnecessarily expensive.

>>257962
Axing the Kilda railway was a bad decision. Suggestion: Build the heavy rail link to Doncaster along the Eastern Freeway, convert the right of way back to heavy rail and connect both with an underground tunnel running a metro style service. Profit all around.

>>257986
Stadtbahn services make sense for cities that do not have the population base for a full scale heavy rail network.

>>257961
>>258059
0/10

>>258059
cool story, bro

seriously, not one word of that was remotely true

Show me an high speed rail system that is
1) commonly used
2) breaks even with revenue
3) not located in highly dense asia

>>258086

>HSR would be slower than a flights.
I would rather take an overnight train with a private room and bath than fly. Where does 12-16 hours get me at HSR speed?

>>258086
See OP, its popular and competes successfully with short hop flights

>>258110
Back where you started.

Allowing for long stops and slow passage around major stations, mileage is well into four figures - somewhere around 1500 at a guess.

>>258114
>competes successfully

no they don't. Airlines are eating away ridership year after year because they can take you the same place cheaper and faster, even in Europe.

>>258126
lol nope, Acela is literally one of the 4 Amtrak lines that makes money, Northeast Regional and Autorail are the other 2, the Airlines have had to consolidate, and short flights with fuel charges and limited airline room make minimum profit, the big money is on trans-contention flights

>>258132
I don't think you understand.

1.5 times the price
3 times the time

Hell, even add an hour for security and it would still be faster.

>>258134
http://www.kayak.com/flights/NYC-BOS/2011-02-27/2011-03-01 This may not be fair since it is next week, so I'll search for the middle of September http://www.kayak.com/flights/NYC-BOS/2011-09-12/2011-09-13
and then
http://www.kayak.com/flights/NYC-BOS/2011-12-01/2011-12-02

whoops its still more expensive lol, turns out that oil futures spike, and that cheap flights aren't as common as they should be!

Though playing Acela against cheap consumer level transportation is pretty funny.

>>258149
Those are round trip prices. The first one doesn't matter since there are no more acela trains today. Acela is $198 for a round trip.

>>258160
Comparing Acela to non business fares is comparing apples to oranges by the way, I'm just going to say that

>>258134
The journey time is less - with HSR, you could hope to scrape at 90 minutes if you do shit right. But then everything else is easier - assuming they don't fuck it up, you won't have to check in 45 minutes before your train, you won't have to sspend 15 minutes in the security queues at either end, and baggage reclaim is as quick as you're able to take your case off the rack. In other words, you hop on the T to meet your train at South Station, and you arrive in the middle of NYC around two hours later, no fuss.

>>258064
>Stadtbahn services make sense for cities that do not have the population base for a full scale heavy rail network.
if they've got just a couple hundred thousand to a million+ people, then trams would work perfectly and some parts could be grade separated on the median strip or/and lightrailway - perhaps evening using the regional railway track(s) that services the place and using it to travel into the surrounding area like the German tram-trains
What Adelaide is doing bringing back trams. It'd work well in Newcastle and Goldcoast too with their half million populations.
>>258059
>HSR would be slower than a flights.
who flies 100-400 or 500 miles? Thats a pretty overkill use of flying and rail can do it quite effectively, and has the advantage of departing and arriving right in the city centre at the railway terminals
>Not enough people would use them.
see graph, ridership of the TGV has increased every year in France, Amtraks been seeing ridership going up every year for the whole decade now most especially on the Acela of course, etc
>Unnecessarily expensive.
Adjusted for inflation Eisenhowers Interstate Highway boondoggle costed 450 billion USD
the V-22 lemon has cost 29 billion to date and has a per unit price tag of 115 million
Overall, the military gets a trillion every year
et cetera
>>258086
>1) commonly used
>3) not located in highly dense asia
French, Spanish, German, etc High-Speed Rail
>2) breaks even with revenue
YOU show me ANY major piece of infrastructure that does so within the first financial quarter of operating.
You can't. All major infrastructure are long-term low-yield investments.
Golden Gate Bridge didn't return money to its investors until the 1970s - do we judge it a failure based on this?
But somehow an arbitrary decision has been made that railways and railways alone have to be returning revenue the day they start running.

>>258110
>I would rather take an overnight train with a private room and bath than fly. Where does 12-16 hours get me at HSR speed?
Nobody runs them that long, longest are ~3 hours and that'll get you 500-600 miles. Paris-Marseilles, Wuhan-Guangzhou.
Maybe when the European networks are better integrated (if you look at a map of them you see that as extensive as they are they all stop at the border because everyones using different systems) or when the Chinese cover the whole country you could see long duration overnight High-Speed Rail being offered for business class. Or if America does it.
But not at the moment.

>>258064
>and connect both with an underground tunnel running a metro style service
>tunneling under the yarra
>tunneling under the loop

Between air and rail, Acela Express has half the market share between Washington DC and New York. Between Boston and New York, it has 37% of the market share. For those who have business in the capital, taking Acela is far better than flying.

Even the Northeast Regional will get you to the city center and it's not much slower than Acela.

>>258216
and this is in spite of how shit it is compared to real High Speed Rail
Imagine what it'd be doing if it was just as good or better

>>258210
Integration is coming. The French are still butthurt over having to fork RFF, so in revenge they took over 9000 years approving the ICE3M or whatever to allow it to run through to London. During the winter season, Eurostar used to run direct services from London to Alpine ski resorts, journey time around 6-8 hours. Also, once the Spanish get off their fucking arses and actually finish their connection to the French border, theoretically you could run a high-speed service from London direct to Madrid or the Costas. Those journeys right now are a 2-hour flight plus all the other shit you have to do before you inevitably end up missing your departure slot. Within 15 years I foresee a functioning European HSR network.

Whispers that PRC wants trans-continental HSR - London to Beijing in 2 days. We can dream, I suppose ...

>>258215
That shit has been done elsewhere. It's not like it'd be wonder of modern technology. And the Yarra does not qualify as a proper river anyway....

>>258226
The key is partial grade seperation. Studying in a medium sized city in Germany right now, but commuting there by rail. The tram trip to uni can be tedious, with the line constantly weaving in and out of car traffic.

>>258216
Eh the regional is really hit and miss in my experience. Had the loco breakdown in New York heading south then we got put on a siding for at least 2 of the 8 hours it took to get back North. Problem is its the lowest priority train on the tracks :(

Acela is much better I'm told but I haven't taken it.

>>258243
there is the eddington tunnel which is running west-east from frankston to domain interchange to caufield
its already going to have to be pretty deep for yarra and loop
yours will have to be even deeper under it!

>>258243
In Melbourne for the grade separation of the trams on median strip look at
the 75 on Burwood Hwy, 5 and 64 on Dandenong Rd, 86 on Plenty Rd, the very last bit of the 109 on Whitehorse Rd

>>258245
Don't get my started on the eddington tunnel. The whole report was the biggest /n/-related joke I've ever heard. Sir Eddy deserves a 10/10 for trolling the gov into building that tunnel. The Greens deserve some credit for their north-south tunnel proposal though.
Melbourne needs a metro: what it doesn't need is an expensive tunnel running along the current East-West axis. How about a tunnel along an axis currently not served by heavy rail.
Don't get me wrong, I love Melbourne's trams. They're great for local travel in the inner suburbs and connecting these to heavy rail systems. The tram network in the inner city is a recipe for clusterfuck and those super stops may be good for travel time in the suburbs, but defeat the tiny purpose of maintaining a large tram network in the CBD.

>>258247
remove cars from the inner-most city, already done bourke st mall - do more
what they did in Prague and their trams are fantastic
and declare places like chapel st a clearway and damn the local traders

incidentally eddington was also contracted to present a report for the british government on high-speed rail that came to the conclusion they shouldn't do it :|

>>258250
Second that, mah boi.

>>258205
the infrastructure road system was meant to transport nuclear missiles via trucks and cargo transports, so the fact that it transported people was a nice after-effect. Marinekill was asked for by the Marines since they want SUPER BLACK HAWKS, but it is flying now, the bugs have been removed (every new aircraft has its bugs, Marinekill morso since its VARIABLE FORMATION is complex)

>>258244
wat, Amtrak has highest priority in NY because you own the lines, then priority goes to Metro North, though it might have been one of the older AEM-7s that snaped, they are all being replaced in 2013ish

>>258254
North of Penn, the tracks are MN. That, plus I assume a broken down train that can't move will of course have the lowest priority.

What does anyone think about the idea of separating track and trains for the Class Is? Of course, that would just mean that UP then fuck EVERYONE over instead.

what i would like to do is digg tunnels arround 600 miles in length from city to city exept where eco mentalists have no problem cutting straight through nature and build motherfucking maglev lines.
Cruise speed 310mph + track design speed at least 410 to have some leeway for future shit

from major city to major city and perhaps airports no other stops... thats what regular rail is for


solves unemployment aswell
unemployed ? no problem, here is a shovel start digging

>>258254
>Nuclear missiles
No.
They were made for military logistical purposes, though. Just like the roads of Ancient Rome.

>>258258
410mph? Weak. Break the fucking sound barrier, and then we'll talk.

>>258254
>the infrastructure road system was meant to transport nuclear missiles via trucks and cargo transports
wWong, the argument was defense - mobilization and such forth
except that the fact was in the 1950s to get funding for anything you just tacted defense onto the name
Further more in the event of such a major war you would not be moving military goods around on roads you would be doing it on rail - moving them on roads would (i) deplete oil reserves needed for frontline action (ii) tear up the roads rendering them unusable within days (iii) take up trucks and manpower better served at the front line
Further more they were not inspired by the Germans autobahns as is often claimed, they did not use them for military logistics for the same reasons explained above (especially after they lost the Caspian cutting off oil reserves) - they used their railways.
Finally in the 1980s both the Americans and Soviets developed mobile ICBM silos to be transported on their railways :P
>Marinekill was asked for by the Marines since they want SUPER BLACK HAWKS, but it is flying now, the bugs have been removed
>the bugs have been removed
the SOCOM crash in Afghanistan?
the Marine ones in Afghanistan spending all their time broken down necessitating the use of an Army helicopter brigade to move them?
the many and numerous problems associated with carrier operation?
etc
>Amtrak has highest priority in NY because you own the lines
Amtrak does not own most of the track it runs services on, include what the Acela runs on
It is owned by state railways and private freight operator
They first of all give their own services a higher priority and second of all have all kinds of highly variable infrastructure problems slowing it down.
Like in Connecticut where the tracks are too close together preventing the use of the Pendalino tilting mechanism.

>>258258
Maglev is a boondoggle, it is expensive beyond cost/benefit just look at the 1.4 billion dollar cost for Chinas 30km one and its energy consumption makes it environmentally dubious
>>258259
that was the argument but it was bogus as already explained

>>258298
The US armed forces have never developed mobile ICBMs other than the submarine launched variety. Russia did indeed use both rail and truck launched ICBMs

>>258337
Wrong.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peacekeeper_Rail_Garrison_Car

>>258298
>Amtrak does not own most of the track it runs services on, include what the Acela runs on

Amtrak owns 363 miles of the 456 mile Northeast Corridor.

71% of Amtrak train miles are on host railroads.

>>258372

>71% of Amtrak train miles are on host railroads.

And Amtrak's reliability mostly hinges on the host railroad's attitudes toward it. Union Pacific and CSX think that Amtrak is the ugly stepchild of the American railroad business and purposely delay Amtrak trains at every opportunity. BNSF and NS are pretty cool toward Amtrak.

>>258372
your second statement proved me right
the private freight operators and state railway operators it runs services on give it a lower priority to their own services + have highly variable infrastructure, things like old overhead and old bridges and poor track conditions and etc, which Amtrak cant do a thing about since it doesn't own it

>>258379

amtrak pays premiums to host railroads that deliver on-timer performance, railroad management loves the idea of free money so dispatchers are usually under instructions to make sure amtrak keeps its schedule. class 1's are chronically understaffed and over capacity so can't usually pull it off even if they want to.

>>258385
and yet they get a lower priority and have to deal with old bridges, old catanery, shit track conditions, too close tracks, etc

>>258399
who cares about real world realities
whats important is how good the theory sounds in an economics class

How come they don't have rolling highways in America? Seems like it would get more trucking off the road
(you'll also notice they don't have their freight railways electrified)

>>258385
the rising moon is pretty epic in that shot. check the closeup

>>258479
I was driving along I-40 (the former Route 66) in Arizona a couple days ago and there was trailer trains and shipping container trains constantly rolling along the Burlington Northern-Santa Fe tracks that run parallel.

>>258511
>>258479
Roll on/Roll off is HUGE, road railers are less common, the big problem is that dealing with railroads requires your packages to be able to fit into the schedule of THIS IS THE CSX TRAIN CHANGING HEADS AT MIDWESTERN US TO UP, ENDING IN LOS ANGLES schedules. Only large set loads can do that, so a lot of local, odd, or store to store internal system loads end up traveling by roads.

>>258557

...which goes for any kind of freight by rail.

Roll on/oof seems horribly inefficient to me, always carrying around the unused truck engines, only really useful for mountain passes (e.g Lötschberg) or tunnels (e.g. Channel tunnel)

>>258559
how is the box going from the train station to wal*mart, magic? Though most roll on/roll off setups in the states have the actual engines stay in their home stations, while the trucks are sent to pick up more cargo, the Newark Yards near my home are full of trucks driving from the ship/railyard/airport setup

>>258557
>local or store to store
freight trams

>>258568
Things that won't happen for various reasons including
>warehouses built along roads with horrifc grades
>train lines being expensive and requiring private payment vs the public roads
>electrical rates not being cheap, even with nuclear energy
>trucks being dirt cheap

Freight trams might work for some applications, but as long as there are small/medium towns full of warehouses built for tax evasion reasons, and shitty roads meant to be cheap, the trucks wlll win. (imho, direct freight to warehouses is better, and exists already, the big expense is switchers rather than using a local engine to move cars full of cargo from the mainline to the sidings/garbage from the sidings to the mainline.)

>warehouses built along roads with horrifc grades
Most light industry areas (warehouses) are built on flat land, as their buildings usually require large flat areas. There is also often large amounts of road and siding space in the newer areas, to allow ample truck turning area. This is ideal for a tram network.
>train lines being expensive and requiring private payment vs the public roads
Private - public partnerships. If your government is organised enough and intelligent enough they can work with industry to get this shit going. Claiming that your government is shit isn't much of an excuses too, as you vote them in and you have the ability to make them do shit (you're just to lazy to get involved).
>electrical rates not being cheap, even with nuclear energy
Electricity is about as expensive as diesel, plus you can have diesel powered trams.
>trucks being dirt cheap
Truck dirt cheap? Don't know where you are living, but in aus they are 100k-300k, trams may cost more but will likely be cheaper in the long term.

I am not against the use of trucks, in 90% of situations they would be the better solutions, but for routes with higher volumes it is a sound solution. In this case (wal-mart), then it is possible that it could work, if the store was quite popular. The better application is from factory to warehouse to port/rail yard though.

>>258570
>>train lines being expensive and requiring private payment vs the public roads
once a streetcar network has broad enough coverage, it could perform double duty hauling freight on it
this used to be common in port and industrial cities with tram network until the 1950s-1960s, and today Dresden has the VW CarGoTram hauling parts between two factories
Its not a private rail, it uses the existing public transport infrastructure with the only addition being sidings
>>electrical rates not being cheap, even with nuclear energy
>>trucks being dirt cheap
This is because trucking companies get waivers for their fuel excise, while rail freight companies have to pay
>>258622
>Electricity is about as expensive as diesel, plus you can have diesel powered trams.
it would be running around on the public transport tram/streetcar network, so yes the freight rail vehicles would be electric
maybe if a particularly long private extension were built and the builder didn't want to electrify they might have their own diesel or natural gas freight rail vehicles but otherwise

>>258622
>In this case (wal-mart), then it is possible that it could work, if the store was quite popular.
freight trams could bring goods to a modal interchange where they are then loaded on light trucks for final delivery
inside a city this could be a good alternative shops and stores to receiving stock

>>258629
oh and also moving freight beyond the range of the tram network

>>258622
HAHAHAHHAHA

electricity isn't cheap in the Northeast because a bunch of plants are offline for the winter/repair season/economic collapse (natural gas is expensive as shit to burn) so there is a scarcity.

Trucks here are at a discount 50K-100K for fleet purchases, a cheap tram costs a million bucks, GE's switchers are 400K new, 300K used, and new heavy rail units are all at least 1 million USD.

Goverment working with Industry is communist son, we don't do communism here in America.

>>258629
Freight here comes from the ports to a railyard, is taken to a transfer point in the middle of nowhere, then driven the last mile, because Wal*Marts tend to be located in the middle of nowhere historically, and tram networks would require.. well massive massive expensive building for no gain, since freight trams are nonexistant. You would have to build a new unit from scratch, where a modern battery/fuel cell/hybrid drive switcher could do the job cheaper.

These are what trams would most likely look like here, smal engines which travel at night to some warehouses from terminals, rather than in intra city service.

You don't get a waiver for fuel, its taxed, diesel fuel is diesel fuel (and it sucks if you want to run double stacks/high cubes since you need more expensive setups)

>>258635
>a cheap tram costs a million bucks
wat
>Goverment working with Industry is communist son
no communism would be the government running the industry
government working with industry ranges from state capitalism to fascism
>Freight here comes from the ports to a railyard, is taken to a transfer point in the middle of nowhere, then driven the last mile, because Wal*Marts tend to be located in the middle of nowhere historically
tram/streetcar goes in city-urban area-inner suburbs
so they would be running out there
as for cost of freight trams, well you build a couple units or better yet a couple hundred thousand and things like economy of scale kick in
they'd also be sharing a lot of parts with the passenger trams running on the network, lowing prices and simplifying repairs and so on
>These are what trams would most likely look like here, smal engines which travel at night to some warehouses from terminals, rather than in intra city service.
bingo
>You don't get a waiver for fuel, its taxed, diesel fuel is diesel fuel (and it sucks if you want to run double stacks/high cubes since you need more expensive setups)
look it up bro, trucking companies in many American states get waivers for paying the tax for their fuel while rail companies gotta pay full price - some have sued and won and some have lost it varies by state

>>258637
I'm basing it on the same tram frames that haul people, they tend to cost 1 million per unit .
That tram IS the most common one, though in the States we call them switchers, they are only 300K-500K but they last forever and you can sell them to Mexico when they are old for some extra cash. You pretty much describe their operation on Long Island, hauling bulk and strange loads via existing passenger lines and older freight lines to garbage customers (a big user of railroads is garbage companies), construction firms, and some goods, though since they don't run in the day for the most part, since faster passenger rail runs then, they aren't the most.. useful freight.

I work for UPS, the only waiver we have is from some unionization for temporary workers, CSX has cheaper fuel costs because their engines are better at drinking fuel then our trucks (since the fleet is going through painful renewals)

>>258628
that was kinda my point, it would be electric because that would be better, but that does not mean is HAS to be electric, there are options for other situations.
Gov working with industry happens all the time. In the city where I live most large infrastructure projects are private-public partnerships, but that even isn't the only way to go about it. The US military work with the aviation industry to develop their tech, many cities waste disposal systems are owned by the state but managed by private companies.

And you don't need to invent some elaborate fancy tram for transport, even something as a tractor unit pulling basic un-powered wagons will do, and that is really just taking what exists and adapting. Even with that being said fright trams exist [pic related]

On the plus side from trucks, one of the biggest wastes of money and time in freight is having to change transportation modes. So for the tram to work is needs to to be for the whole route (ie port to warehouse, or warehouse to shop). You don't want to be having to mess around changing it to a truck when it is half way there.

>>258638
>they tend to cost 1 million per unit .
no they dont, that is a highly exorbitant fee
yes trains are going to use the diesel more efficiently that trucks, but that doesn't negate that they pay the taxes on them while trucking companies get exemptions in many states
>>258639
>And you don't need to invent some elaborate fancy tram for transport
well the CarGoTram is an original design, but I assume it uses a lot of parts in common with whatever else Dresden operates