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Riding the World's Fastest Train @ 500 kph
angkor writes "Riding the world's fastest train @ 500 kph - some lucky people got a chance to ride on this experimental train. The Japan Times has the story." I like the part where the wheels retract as it starts picking up speed, with the train floating 10cm over the tracks. If only the California high-speed rail system was up and running.
I hate flying. The cramped seats. The claustrophobia. The ridiculous rules about standing and walking around...
I'd much rather travel by train, but it's always been much too slow. Even though these new trains are still slower than flying, they make up the difference quite a bit.
A smooth, relaxing train ride where all seats are Business class or better? Sign me up.
I have been pwned because my
I am just wondering the cultural obsession that the Japanese have with rail systms, if any one has an answer.
Perhaps your question should be "What is the reason for the lack of a good rail system in the USA?" Lots of places in the world have good rail transport, not just Japan, virtually all of Europe too.
but can it be made safe against terrorists?
No. We should never do anything ever again, just in case someone decides to break it.
Catering to those in the cities? That's funny, I happen to live in a large city with a terrible mass transit system (Los Angeles).
Japan needed something to spend money on after World War II in order to get people re-employed. And they weren't allowed to spend it on building up a huge military, so they spent it on public works projects like the shinkansen (high-speed electric rail).
No one has ever told America that she's not allowed to spend money on military growth. Maybe if we hadn't spent trillions of dollars on the cold war, we would have a great national train system right now. Instead, all we have had to show for it is a collection of weapons that are only useful against a giant enemy that doesn't exist anymore and hundreds of thousands of out of work government defense contractors (most of those lost their jobs in the early to mid-90's). Oh yeah there's that huge national debt.
My other first post is car post.
I took the Amtrak Southwest Chief from Kansas to LA over Christmas. Being able to stretch out (I'm 6'4") and having a sleeper to nap in, plus a 110V plug for my laptop was great.
Damn well better be great, at $1100 round-trip.
However, keep this in mind: When a plane lands at an airport, that is a minimum of 45 minutes from touchdown to takeoff, and usually more like an hour. The train stops are 5 minutes.
Now, it takes 3 days to get from New York to LA via rail (and a day and a quarter from KS to LA). The fastest the train goes is about 75 MPH (about 125 kph). Most of the trip's legs are pretty long - a TGV would be able to run at top speed for more than 90% of the run. That would pull the time down to less than a day from NY to LA.
Trains are FAR more efficent than planes at moving people, so the cost per seat can be far less. Also, making the train bigger or smaller depending upon load is easy - add cars. You really can't bolt a few extra seats on a plane. You also can make the seats larger on a train for comparitively less cost than a plane.
So, why don't we have this in the US? First, there's the Teamsters - they would much rather see freight move by truck than train, as that employs more Teamsters. Second, when the government cherry-picked the passenger rail from Sante Fe et. al., they really screwed up. SF owns the rail beds, and SF sees no reason to improve the railbeds to allow for fast trains. Amtrak would like faster trains, but with the railbeds in the condition they are, 70MPH is the limit. Also, since Amtrak is forbidden to carry significant freight, they cannot use freight to subsidise passenger service.
It's a shame, since if we had a decent rail service in this country, we would need fewer airports and aircraft (though, living in the Air Capitol of the World, that might be a bad thing) and we could reduce the numbers of trucks and cars on the highways (especially if Amtrak offered more AutoTrain service - I'd love to pull my car on a train in Newton, and pull off in Williams, then drive to the Grand Canyon).
But as long as SF sees no reason for faster freight service, and Amtrak cannot upgrade the lines, we will be stuck with the CF we have now.
www.eFax.com are spammers
Maybe if we hadn't spent trillions of dollars on the cold war, we would have a great national train system right now.
Maybe we could ride it to Washington on MayDay to listen to the Premier speak, and watch the Migs fly over.
Hot Damn! It's the Soggy Bottom Boys!
While I agree with you that the US undersupports rail travel, you also have to look at the distances we are talking about:
London to Paris: 213 miles.
Paris to Berlin: 545
London to Instanbul: 1557 miles.
New York to LA: 2400 miles.
Intercity European distances are much more representative of single regions of the US, such as the East Coast:
Boston to Jacksonville, FL: 1000 miles.
Not coincidentally, there is much more ridership on East Coast routes, and talk of setting up a regional rail system for California alone:
Redding,CA-> San Diego, CA: 600 miles).
It's not that Europeans are pinkos or Americans are knuckle scraping neanderthals; the geography of the two contients are different, and rail will always be relatively more practical and important in a united Europe than in the United States.
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