California HSR was a bad idea from the outset, and it failed for the reason people said it would fail. That failure only reinforces why “we can’t have nice things” in the US (our governments are incompetent).
Incompetence is certainly a part of it, along with graft, but the train really is something that nobody misses. Going from SF to LA is cheap, fast and easy now. Plus the geography and environmental regulations that pump billions into lawyer pockets that one has to meet doesn't help competing against the airplane.
Well for one, plane trips release massively more carbon. I saw the stats on it and for one route the kg of co2 per person on a train was 3kg and the same trip by plane was over 100kg
Yes, but trains may be a little safer from that perspective. They have hundreds of doors instead of just two, and each door lead to the land, not to a free fall.
So you can threat the driver, but I don't see how you can prevent passengers from going away as soon as the train stops.
Now I agree that terrorist can be creative sometimes
”I don't see how you can prevent passengers from going away as soon as the train stops.”
Stop the train between stations, in an area with free views all around for at least a hundred meters, put two terrorists with a gun and night vision devices on each end of the train, one on each side.
Because of the height of the step down to the track, many people would already find it difficult getting out of the train if there is no platform, even if they wouldn’t be shot at.
You can hijack a plane with two people in the cockpit. People won't go out and police won't get in for obvious reasons.
With trains, you need an army of guys spread along the train to shoot at people trying to get out. Each one of this guy can be neutralized by the police from outside or even or passengers from the inside (see thalys train attack). I'm not saying it's impossible but it certainly qualifies as more difficult.
Well anyway, trains are more comfortable. That's the main reason why I like them better.
I’m not claiming trains are the perfect hijacking target, but they aren’t that bad, either:
1. I doubt you’ll need an army. Chances are most of the passengers will be too scared to even try running away.
2. You probably can afford to lose a few of the most adventurous passengers.
3. In many trains, it isn’t that hard to lock the doors using chain locks you bring in. You can even (partly) do that before your hijack starts.
4. If you don’t start shooting hostages, the police won’t go in for the obvious reason that they want to keep the hostages alive.
From the viewpoint of a terrorist big disadvantage of hijacking a train is that you give up leaving the scene alive and free (airplanes used to have that as a possibility, as you could negotiate for kerosine and fly to a friendly country)
The US is a little unusual in that we don’t have a ton of trains already.
Europe and Asia have tons of passenger trains that millions of people ride on every day. Why do you think the risk is that great? These trains already exist and they don’t get hijacked all the time.
There are reasons to be against trains I suppose but fear of terrorism seems very farfetched. There are much softer targets around. It’s not like a train is a force multiplier like a plane is, you can’t take it anywhere.
Where do you get the impression I do? I just replied to a remark ”I don't see how you can prevent passengers from going away as soon as the train stops” with an IMO (but not in HN’s opinion, it seems) reasonable scenario.
You can also miss your train and just hop on the next one. This is the main reason why showing up 2 minutes before your train is normal but people don't do that for flights.
If HSR would have ever been built in the US, the security measures would have been similar to flying. There's a lot more people on a moving train and it would be moving at dangerously fast speeds. So it's not obvious that getting on one would be so much easier and faster than onto an airplane. Certainly the one door boarding/deboarding is a problem with airplanes, but since the world has transitioned away from 747s and toward 737s, this issue isn't particularly troublesome.
Planes have issues with weather delays. SFO is one of the worst airports in the country with respect to on time performance. And short haul flights usually get shafted first.
CAHSR would also have the benefit of reducing the need for short haul flights to use up landing slots at busy airports like SFO and LAX.
Plane is not that fast. SFO is 20-40 minutes from SF (pending traffic) plus security lines plus some extra time for padding. Plus flight delays.
LA falls within the ideal distance for HSR.
Your monthly travel is also cheap because you scheduled it far ahead of time. Spontaneous flights to LA are expensive. If I want to fly to LA tbis saturday (one way) it will be $140.
It sounds like a comment by a typical American who's never been to a country with a good train system. The sheer ignorance of Americans about things outside their borders is astounding.
I have been on fast trains in Europe and in Taiwan. My main problem is that they go too fast and you don't get to see any of the countryside. A lake will fly past you in about 1/8 of a second. It's a soulless way to move from one point to another. So that's my experience of traveling in Italy and Taiwan: I only saw cities, though I did travel extensively through those countries by train.
Going by car, which I did recently in Benelux, is so much more pleasant. You stop by local restaurants when you're hungry, you check out culture outside the city center, you see how regular people live. You get to smell the environment. You really experience the country you're in.
As far as HSR in America, thank goodness there's no need to argue about it anymore, as even the people who have embraced it wholeheartedly have decided to abandon the idea. We probably won't see HSR ever in the United States, as self driving cars will make it a silly idea in the next couple of decades.
Self-driving cars can never handle the number of passengers a modern train can. Highways max out at 1900 people per hour per lane, in ideal conditions. And you're completely forgetting how much carbon cars spew into the air for moving thousands of pounds of metal around just to transport a single person.
One of the more important issues is that going from SF to Stockton or Modesto are not fast or easy. We have a housing crisis up here that could be significantly improved if one could reasonably, cheaply, quickly commute from a much more affordable area.
HSR down the 101 corridor south of the Bay Area would be awesome and welcome. Would help alleviate housing issues if people could commute from places like Paso Robles, etc. That winding central valley route was just stupid.
High speed rail is beneficial over time; other parts of the world are doing it with success. It seems a very bad sign that a large project in the USA is so difficult, as mentioned elsewhere. Last quick comment is, don't discount the possibility that this is hardball from a new (attorney) Governor, and there are more chapters to this story coming.
The difference between America and Europe, Japan, etc. is that is so spread out. To get from place A to B in an airplane you essentially just need two runways. A train needs miles and miles of expensive track that wind around the landscape between the two places. It just doesn't make sense except in densely populated areas like the Northeast.
>It seems a very bad sign that a large project in the USA is so difficult
It's not just this one project, it's all the infrastructure in the US. It's horrifically expensive to build (compared to countries like Germany and Japan, which themselves are not low-cost-of-living places), it takes forever to build, there's massive cost overruns, etc. America is really just politically broken and unable to build the infrastructure it needs to continue as a world-leading economy.
Somehow America continues to be a world-leading economy, with a growth rate considerably better than that of Europe with its high speed rail. Can you name a large European company formed in the last decade or two that's dominating anything at all in this world? Something like Google or Facebook or Uber or Airbnb or Stripe?
The cynic in me says that all of these companies (maybe except Stripe, not familiar enough with them to know if they are embroiled in anything shady) are far to cavalier with privacy, legality, and generally common decency to fly anywhere else.
These companies dominate the world in what they do. There were no laws against their existence in Europe, but for some odd reason they did not originate there.
While I have a frequency bias, I’ve never experienced more delays and outright cancelations than LAX-SFO. Southwest on this route seem particularly bad. I was excited, and voted for, the HSR.
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[ 3.9 ms ] story [ 127 ms ] threadClearly you have never been on a decent train. Its massively preferable to driving.
A two hours train trip is generally much shorter than a one hour plane trip.
So you can threat the driver, but I don't see how you can prevent passengers from going away as soon as the train stops.
Now I agree that terrorist can be creative sometimes
Stop the train between stations, in an area with free views all around for at least a hundred meters, put two terrorists with a gun and night vision devices on each end of the train, one on each side.
Because of the height of the step down to the track, many people would already find it difficult getting out of the train if there is no platform, even if they wouldn’t be shot at.
With trains, you need an army of guys spread along the train to shoot at people trying to get out. Each one of this guy can be neutralized by the police from outside or even or passengers from the inside (see thalys train attack). I'm not saying it's impossible but it certainly qualifies as more difficult.
Well anyway, trains are more comfortable. That's the main reason why I like them better.
1. I doubt you’ll need an army. Chances are most of the passengers will be too scared to even try running away.
2. You probably can afford to lose a few of the most adventurous passengers.
3. In many trains, it isn’t that hard to lock the doors using chain locks you bring in. You can even (partly) do that before your hijack starts.
4. If you don’t start shooting hostages, the police won’t go in for the obvious reason that they want to keep the hostages alive.
From the viewpoint of a terrorist big disadvantage of hijacking a train is that you give up leaving the scene alive and free (airplanes used to have that as a possibility, as you could negotiate for kerosine and fly to a friendly country)
Europe and Asia have tons of passenger trains that millions of people ride on every day. Why do you think the risk is that great? These trains already exist and they don’t get hijacked all the time.
There are reasons to be against trains I suppose but fear of terrorism seems very farfetched. There are much softer targets around. It’s not like a train is a force multiplier like a plane is, you can’t take it anywhere.
Where do you get the impression I do? I just replied to a remark ”I don't see how you can prevent passengers from going away as soon as the train stops” with an IMO (but not in HN’s opinion, it seems) reasonable scenario.
If they just want to kill people, they can shoot them at any public event.
An airplane is a way more vulnerable target than a train is.
Hijacking historically wasn’t primarily aimed at killing people.
No it wouldn't. You can't redirect a train into skyscrapers.
And the failure modes of taking out the "pilot" on a train are much safer than those of a plane.
CAHSR would also have the benefit of reducing the need for short haul flights to use up landing slots at busy airports like SFO and LAX.
LA falls within the ideal distance for HSR.
Your monthly travel is also cheap because you scheduled it far ahead of time. Spontaneous flights to LA are expensive. If I want to fly to LA tbis saturday (one way) it will be $140.
Going by car, which I did recently in Benelux, is so much more pleasant. You stop by local restaurants when you're hungry, you check out culture outside the city center, you see how regular people live. You get to smell the environment. You really experience the country you're in.
As far as HSR in America, thank goodness there's no need to argue about it anymore, as even the people who have embraced it wholeheartedly have decided to abandon the idea. We probably won't see HSR ever in the United States, as self driving cars will make it a silly idea in the next couple of decades.
Instead, you should compare the high-speed train with a motorway journey, stopping at the rest area for a McDonald's.
Slower trains are available if you want to better enjoy the view.
It's the compulsory land purchases and expensive consultants which are the main expense.
This is definitely not true. SFO's Terminal 1 cost $2.4 billion. Let's not forget the huge amount of greenhouse gas emissions from airplane fuel.
It's not just this one project, it's all the infrastructure in the US. It's horrifically expensive to build (compared to countries like Germany and Japan, which themselves are not low-cost-of-living places), it takes forever to build, there's massive cost overruns, etc. America is really just politically broken and unable to build the infrastructure it needs to continue as a world-leading economy.
a payout to the union’s and bureaucrats to tide them over until the legislature can think up another boondoggle.