alt text
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
edit: fixed alt text
this post was submitted on 31 Oct 2023
1753 points (97.9% liked)
Fuck Cars
9818 readers
28 users here now
This community exists as a sister community/copycat community to the r/fuckcars subreddit.
This community exists for the following reasons:
- to raise awareness around the dangers, inefficiencies and injustice that can come from car dependence.
- to allow a place to discuss and promote more healthy transport methods and ways of living.
You can find the Matrix chat room for this community here.
Rules
-
Be nice to each other. Being aggressive or inflammatory towards other users will get you banned. Name calling or obvious trolling falls under that. Hate cars, hate the system, but not people. While some drivers definitely deserve some hate, most of them didn't choose car-centric life out of free will.
-
No bigotry or hate. Racism, transphobia, misogyny, ableism, homophobia, chauvinism, fat-shaming, body-shaming, stigmatization of people experiencing homeless or substance users, etc. are not tolerated. Don't use slurs. You can laugh at someone's fragile masculinity without associating it with their body. The correlation between car-culture and body weight is not an excuse for fat-shaming.
-
Stay on-topic. Submissions should be on-topic to the externalities of car culture in urban development and communities globally. Posting about alternatives to cars and car culture is fine. Don't post literal car fucking.
-
No traffic violence. Do not post depictions of traffic violence. NSFW or NSFL posts are not allowed. Gawking at crashes is not allowed. Be respectful to people who are a victim of traffic violence or otherwise traumatized by it. News articles about crashes and statistics about traffic violence are allowed. Glorifying traffic violence will get you banned.
-
No reposts. Before sharing, check if your post isn't a repost. Reposts that add something new are fine. Reposts that are sharing content from somewhere else are fine too.
-
No misinformation. Masks and vaccines save lives during a pandemic, climate change is real and anthropogenic - and denial of these and other established facts will get you banned. False or highly speculative titles will get your post deleted.
-
No harassment. Posts that (may) cause harassment, dogpiling or brigading, intentionally or not, will be removed. Please do not post screenshots containing uncensored usernames. Actual harassment, dogpiling or brigading is a bannable offence.
Please report posts and comments that violate our rules.
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Number of reasons, risk of trespassing at a large number of crossings is only one of them:
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.
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 bent 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.