me_irl

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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.
- "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.
- 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
  
  it should still be enough to travel faster than cars though, like 140 is pretty normal for trains whereas for cars that's about the maximum they should ever go no matter what
  
  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.
  
  These are simply reasons why it's difficult for even high speed projects to go fast in the city, due to using existing infrasturcture because building a separate high speed network in a built up area are orders of magnitude greater...
  Just look to Amtrak's Acela, The States' first, and for a long time only high speed rail line. It can only go its full speed for a portion of the line because of all the kinds of challenges mentioned above.
  
  High speed within city limits is something like 100km/h, metro speeds. Which also don't have level crossings due to frequency.
  For actual HSR you need distance between stations, a stop max. every thirty minutes or so, better upwards of an hour. If you want to have multiple stops within the same metro area (which can make a lot of sense) the train isn't going to drive particularly fast between them, how could it, it has to accelerate, decelerate, and probably also deal with local trains sharing the same track.
  As to the Acela... those might be high speed trains, but it's definitely not running on high speed track most of the time, as such it would be wrong to call it a high speed line: The Acela does an average of 113km/h, Germany has S-Bahn trains (something in between metro and commuter rail) which go 140km/h (not average because they stop in every village but the track supports it and they hit it regularly).
  And I know the track there isn't quite as bad but it still looks somewhat like this. Don't be surprised if trains have to crawl. Cargo companies don't care about speed and hate maintenance, that's why that happens. I'm actually surprised it's even legal to drive there. Proper HSR trains couldn't even drive there same as a Lamborghini won't go offroad, and I heard they had tons of trouble getting the Acela trains to run on its track, those modern units monitor track condition.
  
  I can't really discuss this further if your definition of high speed rail changes. Typically it is defined at somewhere above 200km/h. Trains can't go much above 100km/h in the city, as you say, but by the above definition this is not high speed. My previous comment gave reasons why high speed trains are often further limited to anywhere between 10 and 80km/h in urban areas.
  
  My definition didn't change: It's just that HSR is not an inner-city thing, it's between cities, and 100km/h are properly fast metros. HSR it's not a metro replacement, or a streetcar replacement, it's for travel between metro areas to across the continent but it also shouldn't be surprising if within cities, HSR can't go faster than your usual metro. Unless you build the corridor first and the city second, or demolish a couple of neighbourhoods, there's just going to be too tight curves. And that's fine HSR trains spend most of their time in cities standing in a station anyway.
  My previous comment gave reasons why high speed trains are often further limited to anywhere between 10 and 80km/h in urban areas.
  And that's insanity while metros are zipping by with 100km/h. Also Acela's track troubles are not just in urban areas, even though the worst spots are in city centres.
  The first actually HSR line in the US will be in California, with a minimum track speed of 180km/h and grade separation everywhere. Not all corridors are new but none will have curly track.
  
  I'm looking forward to CA-HSR - that's for sure.
  
  Electro-mechanical? Lucky you, most of tram networks here have only mechanical, where old lady should switch direction with a crowbar.
- If it is the same time and cost, you still save on time where you don't need to focus on the street or even worse. You can read something, prepare other stuff or just do nothing and relax.

156 comments