- cross-posted to:
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- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
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I guess the answer is to sell high speed rail as having benefit as military project like the interstate highway was.
Like we can have a million soldiers moved from east coast to west coast or vice versa or the borders in less than 6 hours type of thing,
With about 10% overhead on the travel time, a pretty mainline high speed rail line would take about 15 hours to go from DC to San Fransisco. Each train (assuming Japanese trains like Amtrak is buying for Texas) can carry about 1323 seats, plus standing room. They can run 16 trains per line per hour. So, that’s 21,168 people per hour passing on the rail.
Assuming the 15 hour lead time (and no loading time of note because Sergents are really good at yelling people onto trains), within 24 hours, the Pentagon could move about 211,680 soldiers coast to cost from time t=0 to t=24 hours. That’s coast to coast, mind. If you do it from say the middle of the country to SF, it’s only a 4.7 hour trip, so now you can get 19.3 hours of soldiers moving (and arrived) around 408,542 people delivered by t=24hrs. Then, it’s another 508,032 every 24 hours after that.
Now, while it’s not particularly feasible to have commercially driving HSR across the empty center of the US, the military has a whole different set of priorities, and damn, that’s a lot of equipment & people that could be moved really fast. Yes, planes are faster, but there’s no way they’ll keep up with HSR once the train pipeline fills. This is a latency vs carrying throughput load equation and trains will win it big time. Always have, always will.
The US way way way behind on building infrastructure. Our infrastructure deficit is trillions of dollars, and our transit modality is decades behind Europe, China, India, japan, and even starting to slip behind sections of Africa. We’re failing as a developed nation because we refuse to invest in modern transit (and many other issues like healthcare, usurious education costs, and losing our democracy to dictator thinking). We’re flailing hard right now. HSR should be a massive investment for our country, along with regional/city rail (trams, metros, heavy regional), but since our population mostly has never ever seen a modern city like Paris, London, Beijing, Tokyo, or Rome so they have no idea what it can even be like to live somewhere well designed for people instead for for cars.
Though, watching the military test the rails by moving a half million people in 24 hours would be hilarious for those of us not trying to coordinate it.
The USA has failed to develop infrastructure because it’s been hollowed out by decades of finance capitalism. The neoliberal government is now not only unwilling but unable to do anything but hand money to billionaires.
You’re spot on.
That’s not even remotely realistic. It takes a freight train about 5-7 days to travel from coast to coast. It takes a team driving a big rig about 3 days to make the same trip. The reason airplanes make it in hours is because they get to fly over that pesky thing thst slows down trains called mountains
One of the biggest reasons it takes a long time to move freight on American railroads is because they are being run by idiots using stupid metrics which causes unneccesary delays.
Thanks for the reply. For the record I’m talking about exaggerating the tactical utility (or even outright lying) of highspeed rail so normal people can benefit, in a shit post at work to distract myself.
China has successfully prototyped a 1000 km/h train, which is faster than commercial aircraft, and is researching the viability of trains moving up to 4000 km/h.
So, you are trusting something moving at near the speed of sound on rails? The first time that derails at speed, ugly won’t even begin to describe the carnage
it was obviously an exaggeration but u would have to be completely brain dead to think freight trains in the amerikkka of all places is in any way representative of the kinds of speed high speed rail can go. Its called highspeed rail for a fucking reason, and even if the speeds where even comparable, guess what highspeed rail wont stop in the middle of the tracks in random places to change crews nor will it get stuck behind massive trains as they unload cargo because bypasses were built for normal train lengths an amerikkkan freight train companies have too much brain damage in their c suites to use normal length trains and they are too broke due to the the aforementioned brain damage to afford to change the bypass.
and that shit needs to be torn up and rebuilt every 5-10 years 🤦♀️
