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tweet by amtrak ben: i think we should build high speed rail next to freeways only because it would make drivers feel like complete losers all the time
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This is the case in Germany, and it’s glorious. The fastest people on the Autobahn drive around 200 km/h, whereas the trains sometimes travel at 320 km/h. Always fun to see the slow cars!
I don’t know if Deutsche Bahn is the best example of this. ICE’s maximum speed only means you usually end up leaving when you are supposed to be arriving.
Well, Deutsche Bahn is the place where I experience exactly what the meme is suggesting. Should I have mentioned another rail service I don’t know and haven’t experienced?
https://www.theguardian.com/world/commentisfree/2023/oct/08/german-train-travel-deutsche-bahn-kafka explains it better than I could in a single comment. Searching for “Verzögerungen im Betriebsablauf” will give you more examples of the mess Deutsche Bahn’s operations are.
Stuttgart - Köln is one of the connections that go max speed, and it really is glorious.
But I don’t think there’s actually that many places the ICE can go that fast, is there?
I posted this comment already elsewhere in this thread, but lemme quote myself:
The ICE’s max speed depends on model and variies from 250km/h to 300km/h. These speeds can be reached on:
- Hannover-Würzburg (280km/h)
- Mannheim-Stuttgart (280km/h)
- Oebisfelde-Berlin (250km/h)
- Siegburg-Frankfurt (300km/h)
- Köln-Düren (250km/h)
- Rastatt-Offenburg & Schliengen-Haltingen (250km/h)
- Nürnberg-Ingolstadt (300km/h)
- Ebensfeld-Leipzig/Halle (300km/h)
- Wendlingen-Ulm (250km/h)
There are more of these tracks currently under construction:
- Stuttgart-Wendlingen (250km/h)
- Bashaide-Rastatt (250km/h)
And many more are currently in the planning stage:
- Hamm-Bielefeld (300km/h)
- Oebisfelde-Berlin (300km/h)
- Ulm-Augsburg (300km/h)
- Gelnhausen-Fulda (250km/h)
- Frankfurt-Mannhein (300km/h)
- Bielefeld-Hannover (300km/h)
- Nürnberg-Würzburg (300km/h)
I’m sure newer cars are much better at it, but 150 is already scary enough in my 2012 model. It doesn’t handle bumps well at 130, I don’t want to test fate.
It’s not a question of age, but of the car model. Any german upper middle class car from (at least) the 80s onwards was able to comfortably go 180–200 km/h, upper class > 200 km/h, lower middle class 160–200, smaller cars provide an adventurous driving experience at 150 km/h.
There shouldn’t be bumps on the autobahn.
Nah because they know it would be close to the same after having to wait for the train to arrive.
End to end travel time is the biggest drawback of public transportation. Getting from my city to the next major city is an 8 min train ride or a 20 min drive. But getting from my home to my friends in that city is easily twice as fast by car.
It’s a huge problem. If you live next to the train station and like to go to a pub right next to your destination’s train station, all is well. But for those who like to visit friends instead of going to the nearest pub, public transportation just kinda falls apart.
My wife wanted to pick up our dog that was staying with me at a friend’s place before coming home from work. Because the friend lives a little bit outside of the major city it would have been a 2h20m train ride for the whole trip. Or 30 min by car.
My brother in Christ, this is the exact reason why we are pushing for better public transportation and reduced car dependency.
We dream of a world where, god forbid your car breaks down, you can make it to work within roughly the same amount of time whether you walk, bike, or take the bus. And this isn’t even a fantasy, this dream is alive and well in The Netherlands, Japan, even fucking Disneyland.
We just need to actually start taking Public Transit seriously in this country so that it can improve.
Getting from my city to the next major city is an 8 min train ride or a 20 min drive.
No it’s not. You’re talking about getting from one part of your metro area to another part of the same metro area. It’s all the same city, regardless of arbitrary jurisdictional boundaries. High-speed rail (what this thread is about) is for traveling between different metro areas that would be hours apart by car.
Anyway, you’re not complaining about rail so much as you’re complaining about poor last-mile connectivity (which is better served by micromobility than transit).
It’s a huge problem.
It really isn’t. The solution, if it’s even required, is quite simple - just build train stations where people are, and the problem is gone. It’s like good universe “one more line bro” solution, but it’s works in this case.
But you can’t make that schedule. If you’re running late in a car, there’s nothing wrong. Be late for a train and it’s like being late for a plane. Imagine that every morning trying to get to work.
I spent a few years getting a school bus that only came once a day, I just got to the bus stop on time and it was fine. In most places your urban transport runs at headways of less than 15 minutes, and even down to 90 seconds, missing that isn’t a huge issue.
Driving time is dead time. Train time is time that can be used for reading, napping, watching something on your phone, whatever
Tell me you’ve never used Amtrak without telling me you’ve never used Amtrak. Waiting on the train is not the part that takes time. There are no security checkpoints or any of the security theater that goes on at airports. You don’t have to arrive 45+ minutes early to a train.
I’ve been on Amtrak before. I also remember it being that there were very specific times you could get on and off, which don’t align with many people’s schedules.
They did this where I am from, but the high speed trains cost way too much yo be worth it and they never travel at their full speed and are about the same speed as a car.
You also HAVE to drive to the train station. And by the time you wait for the train and pay for parking, you might as well just drive into the city.
In fact, it hardly saves time or money and often ends up being about the same cost and time.
Also the last train leaves the city shortly after the work day ends. So if you work late or get held up, then you are not going home or paying a crap ton for a Uber home.
It’s just fucked and I hate that it is that way.
they never travel at their full speed
Why? Too much risk someone will be close to the tracks?
If following Hanlon’s razor, that entire situation sounds like someone proposed “we need trains going into the city”, set it up, and called it a day.
The train I usually take saves maybe only like 15 minutes (normally about an hour to drive), but at least you can do more stuff on the train rather than sitting at the wheel.
I would imagine the curvature of a highway is too tight a turn for a HSR to make safely, if “building rails along highways” was taken literally. I could be wrong though
Number of reasons, risk of trespassing at a large number of crossings is only one of them:
- Too many curves
- Old tracks
- Narrower right of way
- Poor maintenance
- Old bridges and tunnels
- Travelling behind lumbering freight trains
- Too many trains at central station
- Said central train station has a 100 year old electro-mechanical switching station (Looking at you, Toronto Union)
None of which are in any way a high speed rail thing. Level crossings doubly and triply so, that’s like building a driveway directly off a highway.
“High speed rail” means intercity rail (think airplane or Greyhound bus replacement), not commuter rail or metro rail. That makes sense to put along a freeway because there’s generally only one direct freeway connection between each pair of major metro areas.
I agree that it doesn’t make sense to put commuter rail or metro rail adjacent to a freeway. Ideally, it would be the opposite: the routes radiating from the city should have the freeways and rail lines spread as far apart from each other as possible, so that commuters in different areas have good access to either one mode or the other, rather than some having good access to both and others neither.
That works. The local L trains running along side the highway in Chicago got me, seeing 5 trains roll by while barley moving in bumper to bumper gave me the final push to covert to public transit
The number of people I’ve met who will never take Amtrak again because they saw one delay, but will sit in gridlock for an hour each way to/from work to go 10 miles without blinking an eye drives me batty
Yeah, there’s precisely one (1) train per day leaving North from Atlanta, and it departs at 11:30 PM. It’s a fucking joke!
We’re the end of the line but we finally got service back where I live (we had it… In the 80s or something?) we have a morning and evening now and it’s really good for heading north to DC and nyc.
I agree we need to get that network expanded though, we have the rail for it already
You’re moving barley? You can’t move barley on a passenger train, you need a freight train for that.
You can experience this in multiple parts of Los Angeles. Don’t tell anyone. It’s fucking glorious.