A massive high speed railway network across North America, coast to coast. Russia did it, China did it, most of Europe did it. Canada and the USA have no excuse.
Canada’s excuse is “we’re roughly as big as the US but have a way smaller population and GDP. I really don’t think it’d be financially justifiable for them to build a rail equivalent to the trans-Canadian highway. It’d be a non-starter in a political sense.
The US, on the other hand… yeah. We genuinely have no excuse.
Property acquisition costs and legal fees are immensely more expensive in the US. Have to obtain those thousands of miles of land for rail development from somebody.
Maybe bring our number of aircraft carriers down to only 3x the rest of the world combined instead of 5x, just as an example.
I did the math on what a single coast to coast least possible distance link from D.C. to San Francisco would cost and it came out to 100 Billion dollars. It would connect no cities other than SF and DC unless they happen to fall directly on the rail line.
US Aircraft carriers cost around 10 Billion each (I’m averaging a bit here) and we only have 11 so we’d have to get rid of ALL of them to pay for a single coast to coast high speed rail link. Trying to connect “Every City in North America” would require cutting the entire military budget in half and spending it all on rail construction for the next 50 to 100 years.
You’re only counting the build cost though, they cost anywhere from $1-2 billion a year to operate depending on which article you read. Considering an aircraft carrier’s service life is usually around 40 years, that’s quite a savings just from removing a single carrier group from the fleet. That would pay for anywhere from 50-80% of your estimate right there. I’m not discounting the 40-50 years of rail maintenance, but you would hope rail service could at least come close to breaking even by selling tickets. There’s no profit coming out of an aircraft carrier group, unless you’re the one selling them the supplies.
Property acquisition in the US more expensive than in Europe? I think not, at least for the immense swaths of land that make up most of the US’ land mass.
The legal fees I see, but that’s why most developed nations have legislature for disowning property owners of land necessary for infrastructure at a set compensation. Whether that’s fair or just is up for ideological debate, I’m sure.
I’m not sure any of these are quite as ambitious as crossing the entire continent of North America. In fact I’m not even sure that would make sense to do. That said lines connecting major cities on each coast and some parts of the Midwest would be a no-brainer.
If you look at the various proposals, you’ll see they start like that. You start with focus areas where cities are close together, such as connecting cities in the Midwest to Chicago. You have similar opportunities in southeast, Texas, California, northwest, and of course the northeast where we already have Acela.
However, once those are established, neighboring cities naturally want to be extended to. You can easily imagine that process eventually turning into a connected map - except maybe Great Plains and Rockies
Yeah I definitely support that model. I’m just not convinced very many people would want to go coast to coast by this method. It’s likely to be more expensive and slower.
A bunch of years back, I remember reading about 500 miles as a rule of thumb for that tradeoff. Between two cities less than 500 miles apart, high speed rail could be the preferred travel choice, while air travel clearly wins for longer distances.
Obviously the exact distance depends on the details, but we would do well to present high speed rail for the trips that it can be better.
For me personally, I love travel by train and hope some day to travel long distance at least once. I live near Boston, one of the few US cities with pretty good transit, and one end of Acela, the closest we have to high speed rail. From the time Acela opened, it was immediately the best choice to travel Boston —> NYC. However I’ve been to DC every year and never tempted to take the train. Flying is better for that distance, given how slow Acela is: sure enough, close to 500 miles
Yeah Acela isn’t really true high speed rail though. Many sections are slower. Boston to DC would be workable with the right infrastructure. But coast to coast is over 3000 miles which is a whole different beast, barring some technological advancement.
Last time I looked, it could only achieve its top speed of 150mph for 35 miles!
However the whole idea of Acela is incremental improvement. They did enough initially to make it viable, then Every year they knock a minute or so off the trip. The new train sets have a higher top speed so that should help, when they get into service. I recently saw a project announcement for replacing a tunnel near Baltimore where it was stuck under 30 mph. The new tunnel won’t be high speed but clear enough of a bottleneck to be a nice trip time improvement
I actually like Acela. You have to work with the infrastructure you start with, but eventually I’d like to see a faster and more subsidized line there.
A massive high speed railway network across North America, coast to coast. Russia did it, China did it, most of Europe did it. Canada and the USA have no excuse.
Canada’s excuse is “we’re roughly as big as the US but have a way smaller population and GDP. I really don’t think it’d be financially justifiable for them to build a rail equivalent to the trans-Canadian highway. It’d be a non-starter in a political sense.
The US, on the other hand… yeah. We genuinely have no excuse.
A majority of Canada’s population lives in a straight line from Toronto to Québec, but they can’t even manage that.
Property acquisition costs and legal fees are immensely more expensive in the US. Have to obtain those thousands of miles of land for rail development from somebody.
There are ways. Maybe bring our number of aircraft carriers down to only 3x the rest of the world combined instead of 5x, just as an example.
I did the math on what a single coast to coast least possible distance link from D.C. to San Francisco would cost and it came out to 100 Billion dollars. It would connect no cities other than SF and DC unless they happen to fall directly on the rail line.
US Aircraft carriers cost around 10 Billion each (I’m averaging a bit here) and we only have 11 so we’d have to get rid of ALL of them to pay for a single coast to coast high speed rail link. Trying to connect “Every City in North America” would require cutting the entire military budget in half and spending it all on rail construction for the next 50 to 100 years.
The US is fucking HUGE and has a lot of cities.
You’re only counting the build cost though, they cost anywhere from $1-2 billion a year to operate depending on which article you read. Considering an aircraft carrier’s service life is usually around 40 years, that’s quite a savings just from removing a single carrier group from the fleet. That would pay for anywhere from 50-80% of your estimate right there. I’m not discounting the 40-50 years of rail maintenance, but you would hope rail service could at least come close to breaking even by selling tickets. There’s no profit coming out of an aircraft carrier group, unless you’re the one selling them the supplies.
Property acquisition in the US more expensive than in Europe? I think not, at least for the immense swaths of land that make up most of the US’ land mass.
The legal fees I see, but that’s why most developed nations have legislature for disowning property owners of land necessary for infrastructure at a set compensation. Whether that’s fair or just is up for ideological debate, I’m sure.
I’m not sure any of these are quite as ambitious as crossing the entire continent of North America. In fact I’m not even sure that would make sense to do. That said lines connecting major cities on each coast and some parts of the Midwest would be a no-brainer.
If you look at the various proposals, you’ll see they start like that. You start with focus areas where cities are close together, such as connecting cities in the Midwest to Chicago. You have similar opportunities in southeast, Texas, California, northwest, and of course the northeast where we already have Acela.
However, once those are established, neighboring cities naturally want to be extended to. You can easily imagine that process eventually turning into a connected map - except maybe Great Plains and Rockies
Yeah I definitely support that model. I’m just not convinced very many people would want to go coast to coast by this method. It’s likely to be more expensive and slower.
A bunch of years back, I remember reading about 500 miles as a rule of thumb for that tradeoff. Between two cities less than 500 miles apart, high speed rail could be the preferred travel choice, while air travel clearly wins for longer distances.
Obviously the exact distance depends on the details, but we would do well to present high speed rail for the trips that it can be better.
For me personally, I love travel by train and hope some day to travel long distance at least once. I live near Boston, one of the few US cities with pretty good transit, and one end of Acela, the closest we have to high speed rail. From the time Acela opened, it was immediately the best choice to travel Boston —> NYC. However I’ve been to DC every year and never tempted to take the train. Flying is better for that distance, given how slow Acela is: sure enough, close to 500 miles
Yeah Acela isn’t really true high speed rail though. Many sections are slower. Boston to DC would be workable with the right infrastructure. But coast to coast is over 3000 miles which is a whole different beast, barring some technological advancement.
Last time I looked, it could only achieve its top speed of 150mph for 35 miles!
However the whole idea of Acela is incremental improvement. They did enough initially to make it viable, then Every year they knock a minute or so off the trip. The new train sets have a higher top speed so that should help, when they get into service. I recently saw a project announcement for replacing a tunnel near Baltimore where it was stuck under 30 mph. The new tunnel won’t be high speed but clear enough of a bottleneck to be a nice trip time improvement
I actually like Acela. You have to work with the infrastructure you start with, but eventually I’d like to see a faster and more subsidized line there.