this post was submitted on 11 Oct 2023
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America invented rail megaprojects.
America still has the largest rail network by far. It's well more than twice the size of China's.
The only interesting note is that it's almost all freight compared to other nations' use of passenger rail.
Hehehehe
With 0.92% of electrified rail it's a joke to say that NGL. Absolute numbers are meaningless.
You have to see it into perspective per area then you'll get to feel how dense and therefore useful the rail network actually is. Because what good is a rail network if you can't reach your desired location.
And then you'll see that swiss, Germany and Luxembourg for example end up with less than 10 square km per km of rail while the usa has around 40.
Okay, but the comment implied America doesn't have the expertise to build a passenger network when it actually doesn't have the political willpower. It has the expertise to spare, but no one in power actually cares.
That still is not correct.
Planning a high speed high throughput flexible passenger rail network is a whole different beast than laying non-electrified single track lines in a straight line through the middle of nowhere that basically only serves the occasional 2miles long freight train.
The parameters are vastly different and almost incomparable. And America has decidedly no expertise left in the former.
Other than the fact that there are several American firms who have already done it, and even if there was a knowledge deficit it's the easiest thing in the world for an American company to headhunt foreign talent. Too easy in most industries.
Opposition to new railways is political, be it from establishment organizations or private owners, like in California. That's all there is to it.
Which ones? Which company actually has put out a consistent, significant, structurally sound high speed rail network including stations and the trains themselves that is based in the US?
And headhunting foreign talent tells me that you have not worked in the rail planning sector. These companies are extraordinarily protective of their high value who are the executive "talent" behind their stuff. And the biggest rail tech companies are multinational conglomerates (Alstombardier, Siemens, CRRC, Hitachi) who have no desire or need to outsource to America.
There is noone currently who has both intimate knowledge of American geodetic planning and high stress track planning. And building that knowledge takes a lot of trial and error.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail_in_the_United_States
While their current average speed isn't great compared to the highest speed rails in Europe and Asia, it is comparable to the average high speed services, and Amtrak seems confident in their claims for Acela in 2024.
Just so we're on the same level here - your own article states that high speed rail as it is most commonly referred to means speeds of above at least 200km/h, more commonly beyond 250. Lower speeds are "higher speed rail" in America, or regional/local lines in Europe. My local lowest tier urban mass transit has a normal speed of 160km/h.
America has ONE Line with speeds beyond 250, and that is where all except one of its 200+ speeds lie aswell. That is, sorry, a joke. For one line a network does not make.
Look at that same graphic in the article on the high speed network in Europe and tell me they are even close to comparable.
And, if you keep reading into modern efforts under tab for current efforts, every single failure to expand and improve the networks lists political blockage, not technological.
For example, Southwest Airlines lobbying the Texan legislature into blocking even completely private funding for a high speed passenger rail service.
Thats quite true, but also political blockage prevents the projects from starting. With California high speed rail, the project is going. And we have found that, in addition to political stumbling blocks, California simply lacks access to the knowledge to build this, and must build that up. Its not 'instead of politics', its 'in addition to'.
Why would higher speed mean slower than high speed. Whoever they hired to name stuff should be fired. How can anyone possibly be that bad at their job.
They were probably high.
They should've been higher
While technically a high speed 'regional' metro(like the ones China has been building) does have a top speed of 160km/h, it is more like regional rail than a 'lowest tier' urban transit. Most metro systems have a top speed of 80km/h due to station spacing and physics (motor gear ratios tuned for accelaration).
That or you are talking about the Keisei Skyliner, which is an Airport Express service.
My nearest lowest tier rail bound mass transit system is the S-Bahn Hannover which uses Stadler FLIRT XL 3 at a top speed of 160km/h, yet they only serve Hannover and its immediate surroundings.
This is also the case with the S-Bahn Bern (using Stadler KISS), parts of the S-Bahn Rhine-Ruhr, the S-Bahn Bremen, S-Bahn Mitteldeutschland (Leipzig Halle), S-Bahn Dresden, S-Bahn Zurich and Wiener Schnellbahnen.
If you live near a big(ger) city in the DACH Region but not directly in it (meaning out of range of its Tram system) this is absolutely not uncommon.
In which claims are they confident?
— The new train sets are like 3 years behind schedule and they’re still working out issues. The current schedule is to deploy in 2024
— yes, the new train sets have a higher top speed…. for the 49 miles of track that currently support that. Amtrak are spending billions every year to upgrade more track, but that’s much longer term than most of us expect
— here’s a more realistic example of what they need to deal with: $6B for a 12 year project to replace a 150 year old tunnel, and the new track will still be slow. https://media.amtrak.com/2023/03/amtrak-begins-bp-tunnel-replacement-program-work/
Same goes for the meme tbqh
Thats true. And then America stopped. And then the people who had actual on-the-ground experiance died of old age. Its really another effect of the slow tragedy that is the auto industry
Yeah, but who BUILT our rail system?
Like many other things, we don't like to talk about it...
According to the documentary Hell on Wheels it was mostly built by a man named Cullen Bohannon with his own hands. When he got tired, he used some Chinamen and I think maybe a woman dressed as a man for a stretch.
Also, Dude, Chinamen is not the preferred nomenclature.
It was when Cullen Bohannon single handedly constructed the Union Pacific Railroad in 1865.