[dogf]

This past weekend I saw a show on the bullet trains in Japan.
40 years and not one accident related death.
Teams working on keeping the delays to less that 6 seconds. All electric.

The show was obviously biased towards the bullet train but it got me thinking. Why not in NA? If anywhere, it is needed here.
With that speed I could leave Toronto and be in LA by my next meal.

Anyone know the negatives and why we don't have these capabilities?

[emersonbiggins]

Well, a half-century's worth of subsidies thrown at highways and airlines certainly has something to do with it. It's not an idea that hasn't been talked about in NA (I belong to 3 or so organizations whose mission is just that), but it is an idea that won't get any traction without a major corporate sponsor or a H-U-G-E grassroots initiative (which, IMHO, won't happen with oil at its current price).

Also, passenger railways are currently controlled under FRA regulations, because of the shared track status of freight and passenger rail in NA. Because passenger trains must be engineered to deal with potential collisions with freight trains, they are extremely heavier and therefore more expensive than their Asian and European counterparts, rendering their existence moot. Until the regs change or the government starts condemning land for dedicated passenger rail ROW, we aren't going to see a change, I'm afraid.

[Prince]

There are many reasons why this isn't feasible in the USA. emerson pointed out a few of them with the subsidies given to the air and auto industries.

Also, we are far too much of a suburban society to make the train feasible for the masses. This reminds of what happened in Seattle with the monorail disaster. After years on the ballot the monorail finally passed and they are constructing it now. We are talking upwards of $11 BILLION for **14 miles** of railway. And everyone in the area has to pay for it, but only a small percentage of the population will benefit from this. After all, unless you live near the monorail terminal (and most do not), you'll not likely be using it, nor will you benefit. Some have argued that traffic will be less congested for everyone since some people will be on the monorail--which is pure BS. And yet, everyone has to pay for it, at a tune of nearly a billion dollars per mile.

There's too much "me-ism" in this country, coupled with the overall widespread geographics of our suburban culture to make railway transport viable.

[gampy]

I think a lot of the inertia, regarding building an infrastructure geared towards mass transit is to do with the automobile industry and the geography and history of North America.

#1 People like their cars. Way more than Europeans and Japanese. The cities in North America were built around private auto use. We don't have the history of having large cities built before the advent of the auto.

#2 Geography. US and Canada and Mexico are big countries. Japan is the size of California or smaller. Population density is a factor.

I will say that mass transit, either bullet trains/maglev technology, or just diesel locomotive transport is the way to go, IMO. It requires a mighty political shift in the wind, however. There was talk of building a bullet train from Toronto to Montreal, via Ottawa, a while back, but it somehow got lost in the shuffle. Don't know why, it makes sense, really. Perhaps the airline industry lobbied against it, for obvious reasons.

The train / rail system in Canada has been decimated since WW2. The cheap price of fuel made trucking more economical for transporting goods, but now it might be a little more economical to use rail. Where as in Europe and Japan, fuel costs where sufficient enough to keep people on trains. The Japanese and Europeans made some choices post -war that have more to do with their use of rail and mag-lev. Same with North America. Auto and aircraft were deemed the way of the future.

It would be so awesome if there was a fast rail service along the Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal corridor, beacuse you wouldn't have to deal with airports. Downtown to downtown in a few hours.

But there is a huge airline infrastructure that needs to be fed, so the policos would not want to upset that by taking jobs away from the airline industry.

[emersonbiggins]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('gampy', '
')#1 People like their cars. Way more than Europeans and Japanese. The cities in North America were built around private auto use. We don't have the history of having large cities built before the advent of the auto.

[perdition79]

I used to think high-speed rail was a good idea, that it was something cool, something futuristic. In fact, a majority of us here in Florida had a ballot initiative back in the late 1990's to investigate a monorail between Tampa, Orlando, and Miami. After the commission's report that the cost would be over $60 billion just for the Tampa/Orlando route, it was voted out four years later.

North America already has infrastructure in place for regional transit: roads and highways. Bi-articulated buses could easily become a common sight on regional runs; they can hold up to 200 passengers, cost about $900k, and require only one driver making $40k a year. As a trucker with triples experience, I can say the bus would be a nightmare in cities, but would be perfectly suited to the low grades, wide turns, and long exit ramps of the interstate system.

[pea-jay]

QUESTION TO ENGINEER TYPES:
How does High Speed rail (specially engineered train systems on dedicated electrified track that exceed 150MPH) compare to local or slower electric rail capable of speeds no higher than 100mph in terms of ENERGY CONSUMPTION. I know they'll use more but HOW much more??

And how does that compare to flying and driving?

From the planning side, I know highspeed rail is far more costly to plan for and build than conventional rail electrified or not.