This is also why travelling by train can often be overall faster than plane, despite the train being slower. The station is in the middle of the city, no security check, the platforms are closer to the street, etc.
Depends on what type of train it is. A passenger aeroplane travels around 800 km/hr, a ‘typical’ train about 150-200.
However, the highest average speed of a commercial train is reached by the Fuxing, which goes 320 km/hr, enabling to go from Beijing to Nanjing (1,020 km) in 3.2 hours. The Shanghai maglev used to go faster, about 430 km/hr.
So a train can certainly be faster than a plane on mid-long distances if we take pre-flight time into account.
An experimental Maglev, the L0 Series, managed to go 600 km/hr. At that speed, you’re honestly directly competing with planes at long distances.
Try closer to 30 average. Most rail isn’t rated for above 50 outside the Northeast Corridor, and you’re also pausing for hours at a time sometimes because freight rail gets priority treatment.
Legally passenger gets priority, however to increase the already disgusting profit margins and decrease capital expenditures (why spend on infrastructure when you can pay dividends and do stock buybacks), they have been running longer and longer trains without increasing the length of sidings so when a passenger train wants to pass a 2 mile long freight train, there’s literally nowhere the freight train can go to allow it to pass.
The DoT could fine the railroads each time they do that until they either run shorter trains or build the appropriate sidings, but they choose not to.
Only because US train system is biased toward freight.
Not complaining, it is what it is.
That said, I don’t see any pragmatic way to build passenger high-speed rail across the US. Every state would want it to run for them - otherwise they won’t support it. Then every city, etc.
Edit: for straight shots (point-to-point) across vast distances I don’t see train ever matching planes (like NY to LA)
The US rail network is already kind of a disaster. A lot of major cities don’t even have passenger rail stations at all. There are entire STATES that don’t have a single amtrack station lol.
NYC to LA is 4000km, so a dead straight non stop rail route operating at the current peak of high speed rail (200mph) would still take 12 hours. As soon as you pick a real route and stops and account for that speed being unrealistically expensive you’re looking at over 24h I think.
The annoying thing is that rail infrastructure is also expensive to maintain.
It would be most feasible to have like three high speed rails in the US. Up and down both coasts, and then east coast to west coast through the midwest, Denver, SLC etc.
That alone would be enough to replace a ton of car and plane trips, even if it didn’t provide service everywhere
They said “frequently by several hours”, you’re talking about averages. Due to where I live, the only route I’ve taken regularly is on the list of worsts, and has definitely been several hours behind schedule on a significant proportion of the times I needed it.
This is also why travelling by train can often be overall faster than plane, despite the train being slower. The station is in the middle of the city, no security check, the platforms are closer to the street, etc.
If the two locations are close maybe, but most of the time I would say theyre not remotely as fast.
You can fly from New York to LA in 6 hours. On a train it would take like 3 days
Depends on what type of train it is. A passenger aeroplane travels around 800 km/hr, a ‘typical’ train about 150-200.
However, the highest average speed of a commercial train is reached by the Fuxing, which goes 320 km/hr, enabling to go from Beijing to Nanjing (1,020 km) in 3.2 hours. The Shanghai maglev used to go faster, about 430 km/hr. So a train can certainly be faster than a plane on mid-long distances if we take pre-flight time into account.
An experimental Maglev, the L0 Series, managed to go 600 km/hr. At that speed, you’re honestly directly competing with planes at long distances.
Meanwhile Amtrak trains: 74mph, unless you’re on the Acela, then top is 150mph.
Try closer to 30 average. Most rail isn’t rated for above 50 outside the Northeast Corridor, and you’re also pausing for hours at a time sometimes because freight rail gets priority treatment.
Not sure, and actually I think passenger gets priority, but there’s so few compared to freight it porb leans that way…
I still FUCKING LOVE Amtrak.
Legally passenger gets priority, however to increase the already disgusting profit margins and decrease capital expenditures (why spend on infrastructure when you can pay dividends and do stock buybacks), they have been running longer and longer trains without increasing the length of sidings so when a passenger train wants to pass a 2 mile long freight train, there’s literally nowhere the freight train can go to allow it to pass.
The DoT could fine the railroads each time they do that until they either run shorter trains or build the appropriate sidings, but they choose not to.
Only because US train system is biased toward freight.
Not complaining, it is what it is.
That said, I don’t see any pragmatic way to build passenger high-speed rail across the US. Every state would want it to run for them - otherwise they won’t support it. Then every city, etc.
Edit: for straight shots (point-to-point) across vast distances I don’t see train ever matching planes (like NY to LA)
The US rail network is already kind of a disaster. A lot of major cities don’t even have passenger rail stations at all. There are entire STATES that don’t have a single amtrack station lol.
Just for clarity, this map doesn’t show all Amtrak stations. The cities pictured are just the big ones on the routes
we’re planning on taking my MIL on a train from seattle to phoenix and this helps a lot.
NYC to LA is 4000km, so a dead straight non stop rail route operating at the current peak of high speed rail (200mph) would still take 12 hours. As soon as you pick a real route and stops and account for that speed being unrealistically expensive you’re looking at over 24h I think.
The annoying thing is that rail infrastructure is also expensive to maintain.
24 hours isn’t bad, I took longer sleeper trains in China.
Well it’s not going to be faster than 6 hour plane though 🤔
Either way you’re losing a whole day to travel, at least the sleeper train you save on a hotel room.
The more time I can spend in my house, the better
It would be most feasible to have like three high speed rails in the US. Up and down both coasts, and then east coast to west coast through the midwest, Denver, SLC etc.
That alone would be enough to replace a ton of car and plane trips, even if it didn’t provide service everywhere
We can’t even build a single HSR line anywhere in the US
We’re a long ways away from being able to even think about trans-continental HSR
We simply do not have the competence to do it
Okay yea “often” was bit of an exaggeration on my part
I suspect DekSomBoon is talking about sensible countries
If, in this context, “sensible” means “smaller than half of Texas” maybe…
unless you’re in the US riding Amtrak. it’s never not been delayed for me, frequently by several hours
Several hours is surely an exaggeration. There’s actual data to disprove that.
https://amtracker.net/stats
I see two hours on average as the worst.
They said “frequently by several hours”, you’re talking about averages. Due to where I live, the only route I’ve taken regularly is on the list of worsts, and has definitely been several hours behind schedule on a significant proportion of the times I needed it.
I’m lucky if the Amtrak station in my relatively large city has a departure time during waking hours
yeah my last train was scheduled at 2am (only option out of my largeish city) and was delayed until 6am
100% I’ll just aim to be at the station 15-30min before boarding and even then I’m usually early