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French Train Breaks Speed Record
Josh Fink writes "A French train on the TGV line has broken the wheeled train speed record - again. At a speed of 350 miles per hour, they came close to breaking the all time record of 361 miles per hour, held by a Japanese maglev train. It was last broken back in 1990. From the article: 'The TGV, short for "train a grande vitesse," as France's bullet trains are called, is made up of three double-decker cars between two engines. It has been equipped with larger wheels than the usual TGV to cover more ground with each rotation and a stronger, 25,000-horsepower engine, said Alain Cuccaroni, in charge of the technical aspects of testing.'"
Yes, but can it answer riddles?
Let me introduce you to my very own DMCA-protected encryption key: BC 1B 64 4A 8D DE 49 E8 C3 7D CC EE 1A AD EE
a stronger, 25,000-horsepower engine
25000hp and most of it is used to push air in front of, and around the train. I wonder how much it would cost to build a vaccuum tunnel to run very high speed train in at a fraction of the power required by the TGV...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
One evening I was driving through france, way faster than the allowed limit and the TGV passed
me on the rails about 100 m to the west of the road.
For a second I thought that I was standing still, a very strange feeling at that speed.
http://www.zataka.com/
Even in France, 9 in 10 passenger miles are not by rail.
Deleted
One little engine that could, and a whole lot of others that think they can *sigh*
Life is choochoo - all aboard!
...that you can tell where they've been by the trail of smoke they leave behind.
Step into a huge movement. Don't Tread In Me.
It has been equipped with larger wheels than the usual TGV to cover more ground with each rotation and a stronger, 25,000-horsepower engine
And they would have beat the overall record, except that at the last second they decided to add an aftermarket spoiler, a 40,000 watt subwoofer and ground effects.
When you have nothing left to burn you must set yourself on fire
I'm going to transform myself into a mighty hawk. Either that or I'll just go and work at Dixons, haven't decided yet.
I watched it this morning, and right around 1:35, there's a shot of the train passing under a bridge. It was really difficult for me to comprehend just how fast 350MPH is until I saw this particular shot. Man, that thing is fast!
in the united states, we do not need to waste taxpayers hard earned money on useless, socialist, centralized, bureaucratic monstrosities like supersonic trains.
in america, each person is an individual, with their own car. or preferably, SUV, since cars tend to get smashed. also SUVs can go 'offroading', an enjoyable diversion that reddens the blood coursing through the veins of every freedom loving american, alone on the frontier, conquering nature for the benefit of human civilizaton.
enough of these cheese eating wine sipping communards and their piffle trains. let them all get tuberculosis in the over crowded rat cans called 'passenger cars' and wallow in their dying economy as it goes down a black hole to overspent big-government ruin and waste.
au revoir, les suckers!
where we can listen to DRM music and think it's cool.
Just buy a mac !!!
So apparently maglev has little or no speed advantage over old-fashioned wheeled trains. I assume there's still an energy savings, but currently that doesn't seem to outweigh the extra cost of maglev infrastructure. Perhaps when energy costs rise a tad more...
One little detail has me curious: TGVs, though electric, still use locomotives to push and/or pull the train, a design feature that's been around since the first steam trains in 1833. I seem to recall "futurists" like Arthur Clarke claiming that the train of the future would use lots of small motors connected to each wheel instead of one big one in a locomotive. Not practical?
Quickie Mart in a hurry.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
that's 574.8 km/h
350 miles an hour. That not that much really.
Rail done correctly is by far a better solution for high density traffic than automobiles. No parking problems, accidents, traffic conjestion, or road rage to worry about. No endless stream of internal combustion engines with associated CO2 emissions and other nastyness.
The major problem is being crammed in with a lot of other people, some of whom may not be at all polite or tolerable. Security on such trains needs to be well maintained, and probably different cars with a people density/cost tradeoff. The Dallas light rail system (DART) which opened up a few years ago started on a good note - the major problem was too many people wanting to ride it from too far out. In theory, this might be handled with running more lines in parallel as the rail system gets closer to the center of the city - it's an interesting problem. (Of course, the expense of putting a rail system through a city not designed to accomidate it is non-trivial...)
Regardless, I think the more efficient resource utilization of trains makes them a no-brainer for long term development. The US is lamentably far behind - Amtrack is stuck playing second fiddle to freight trains and has abysmal performance (I'm probably biased as I was once 17 hours late on a train...). Freight rail and passenger rail need different tracks and independent scheduling - freight can move more slowly over rougher tracks, but passenger rail needs to be rapid.
I have always wondered if a properly designed and implemented rail system across the US would be cheaper than air travel (and not all THAT much slower, for bullet trains, particularly given delays airports can introduce...) I guess it's the old bootstrap problem - no money to lay down tracks because there is no guarantee of return on investment, while air travel already has massive inertia behind it and a lot of financial clout to use on the political system.
I hope someday we can muster the political will to build a rail infrastructure the way we have built a highway infrastructure, because there may well come a time when raw materials are too expensive to make building massive car fleets and replacing them every few years economically viable. It would be nice to have a fast, inexpensive way to travel that is actually able to provide reliability.
"I object to doing things that computers can do." -- Olin Shivers, lispers.org
I keep thinking that Amtrak could do a 150mph goods service. Link 10 cities or so in each state to each other by rail corridors e.g. San Diego, L.A., San Francisco, Sacramento, Bakersfield. Transport containerized goods only. Drive down costs through streamlining the process.
Throw out everything that is not needed to move the containers, computerize everything e.g. no driver. Automatic marshaling yards. etc. etc. Could we get a 40ton container coast to coast for less than $100 in less than 24hrs?
But I guess we'll have to let China do that as we have to much political inertia to try something that radical.
Why don't they just put wings on it so it can fly..? Is it really more fuel effecient with it's 25000 HP motor than a airplane? I'm not flambaiting, but If I'm travelling that fast I would rather be in the sky where the biggest thing my vehicle hits is a bird. Imagine the death that would occur if this thing crashed, and there is probably a lot more poetential for such a thing to happen than an airplane. I don't think you will save much time in security checkins, will you? Will security be less for the people and cargo on this as compared to an airplane? How about securing miles and miles of track from sabatage?
Ad eundum quo nemo ante iit!
I wonder how many Germans were chasing them, in order for them to be able to break this record...
25,000 hp sustained is a ton! I wonder how they keep it from melting. Top fuel drag cars are getting in the neighborhood of 8000 hp now, but the engines start to melt after just a few seconds. The transmission actually welds itself together and has to be "rebuilt" after every 1/4-mile run. However, this train probably doesn't do a 1/4 mile in 4.4 seconds.
stuff |
First paragraph of TFA says that it was 357.2 mph, not 350. So it's less than 4 mph slower than the maglev record.
"The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent." --Carl Sagan
it dampens vibration. i saw it on 'modern wheels'.
on-board camera at 515kmh/320mph
Will brake for nobody !!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ih3-2v3FA_M
Imagine how fast it could go if it was retreating!
(Just a joke people)
...green and red and goes 350 miles per hour?
'Men never commit evil so fully and joyfully as when they do it for religious convictions.' B. Pascal
A passenger jet, supposedly, harms the environment as much per passenger, as five passenger cars would over the same distance — if you ignore the impact of building and maintaining the roads.
What's the impact of these trains — including the building and maintaining of the suitable tracks?
One must also note, that the overall (door-to-door) speed advantage, these machines seem to have over airplanes at short and medium distances, is due to the much simpler security/registration procedures, the passengers have to go through to board them. It is not the technology, that requires us to come to the airport 2 hours prior to departure...
What upsets me, is that American "Acela" train can also run pretty fast (even if not as fast as these bullet-trains) — but is not, because the tracks aren't suitable for higher speeds. The moron-run Amtrak has purchased these wonder-trains without improving the tracks, so most of the speed you buy on Acela is due to it simply making less stops between, say, New York and Boston, rather than due to it running appreciably faster.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
That means it is faster than the Bugatti Veyron
speed of sound at sea level = 761.207051 miles per hour
the top of the wheels go twice the speed of the train, and even faster if there is any slippage. Since the train wheels actually dip below the level to f the track the top of the train wheel is actually going even faster than twice the train velocity.
so at 350MPH the tops are going faster than 700 mph.
They are damn close to the speed of sound, and presumably the peak speed was higher than the average speed.
Moreover as they go up in altitude the speed of sound gets slower. so when they cross the alps they will be above the speed of sound for sure.
Maglev, won't have that problem since there's no wheels going at twice the the speed of sound.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
In the USA?
Of course not!
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
High speed trains are definitely a better way to go on that score.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
French Train Breaks Speed Record
Yes, but in forward or reverse? Ba-zing!
trustedworlds.net - gaming, security, and the gunk that lives in between
NY Times article
Alstom's own press release, with some additional details on the train configuration and tests
Wikipedia's entry on land speed rail records
Yea, beacause we all know that roads and highways are 100% funded by private inves... erm, never mind...
Which is why it's a bit silly to expect, say, AMTRAK to be entirely self-funded. Hard to compete with a form of transportation that's subsidized if you don't get your own subsidies.
Well, Amtrack is completely stuck, because they don't OWN any tracks. That's right, our only nationally endorsed rail system has to pay all it's dues to local and statewide private transport companies, who could care less about speed and environmental concerns. Amtrack itself really isn't to blame, it's the government who refuses to consider building interstate rail systems that function worth a damn.
Multiplayer Gaming (defined): Sitting around, discussing single-player games with my friends, at the bar.
"It has been equipped with larger wheels than the usual TGV to cover more ground with each rotation but our real advantage comes from that fact that all of our tracks run downhill."
I thought that the TGV was totally electrified (e.g. no onboard engine). Perhaps they meant that the combined horsepower output of the axle motors is 25,000hp?
The TGV has an equivalent impact to 1.2 gas liter/100km/passenger , which translates to 196 MPG.
It's by far the cleanest widespread transportation means around. (yes, widespread around here, I live in France and my hometown is now 1 hour away from Paris, down from 2, which is pretty cool )
In post-WW Europe, speed records surrender to the French!
This train cruised at significantly higher than the max terminal velocity of an NHRA top fuel dragster.
What an amazing train. When I see things like this, or ride the EuroRail or any trains in Japan, and I think of the train system in the US, I become so deeply saddened.
For anyone that hasn't rode trains in the US, I'll sum it up for you. They are a joke. Amtrak is a joke. They cannot get it together to create a train infrastructure that works efficiently and affordably. Most of them barely go faster than 55 MILES per hour. That's right, miles. There is little in the way of luxury or services with some exception and for a high price. There are some new trains coming on line in some areas, but in general they are worse than they were 100 years ago.
You might ask, "What about all those old movies I've seen with people traveling in elegant dining cars and trips on sleeping cars"? We did have more train routes in the past. There were also lots of light rail cars, electric and horse drawn before those. 'El' lines along with subways. We had elegant train stations (old Pennsylvania Station, NYC, demolished in the 60's for the new Madison Square Garden, &c.). The truth is most of these train lines were purchased by subsidiary companies of GM (General Motors) and the oil industry. They systematically dismantled them. Local routes were replaced by buses. Basically they encouraged the movement of every american to purchase their own automobile. At least one. Peoples experience with the public transportation would become frustrating enough that they would simply not want to deal with it. Those lines that were not completely converted to buses (Amtrak), have been intentionally mismanaged to the point that they are completely incompetent.
I would love to see the USA join the rest of the modern world with an intelligent approach to transportation, instead of building more highways, but it doesn't appear to be coming down the 'pike.
Believe it.
The moron-run Federal government won't give Amtrak enough money to improve the tracks, because it's spending it all subsidizing highways (while somehow expecting Amtrak to make a profit) instead.
Don't blame Amtrak for its inability to compete against a subsidy!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Almost as fast as this, actually.
Ok, good work guys - but really! This modern world is driving me up the wall today - this has been mentioned EVERYWHERE. *zap* french train *zap* french train *zap* french train - ok turn on radio - arrrrrrgh, french train!
They invented a fast train? Good for them, but what someone really needs to invent is a way to killfile the real world, now that would be something.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
French train breaks world retreat record!
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
You laugh, but yeah, that's half the point. What's the other half? Well, see, the French may like to run away, but they are pretty clever.
So here's the idea: Some army (lets say the Germans) are chasing after the French. The French all jump on board their super TGV, which takes off down the track. The Germans stop on the track and say "Ha ha! They are running away! We can't catch their train, but we can just follow it to wherever they went, the fools!" So they start racing down the track following the French train. Meanwhile, far down the track, the French stop the train and get off, and go hide in the woods. The last one to go sets the train in reverse and opens the throttle. Now the last thing the Germans would expect is for the French train to come back, so they're caught completely off guard by the 400MPH TRAIN IN THE KISSER!
When you are truly skilled at fleeing, you can turn a retreat into an offensive.
The enemies of Democracy are
WTF ? Insightful ??
The reality is that the french state budget dispatch for transport is something like 80 % road, 12 % rail.
aurelien
Of course then there's harder to quantify stuff like how the jet exhaust is being injected much higher in the atmosphere, and other factors like how much pollution per gallon does the jet emit compared to a car, but I think your basic statement is way off. Plus the "impact of building and maintaining the roads" is no small thing either.
Still trying to think of a clever sig...
I'm about half way through On Intelligence by Jeff Hawkins and what he proposes in the book fits right in line with this research. It's an interesting read if you're in to that sort of thing.
LOAD "SIG",8,1
LOADING...
READY.
RUN
Probably less than roads - railway tracks need far less materials than a high speed road - a high speed line can be made up of one track each way. A high speed road tends to be six lanes wide plus a shoulder. These trains are also effectively nuclear trains - 80% of France's electricity is from nuclear power, so very little noxious gas per passenger mile. (Or kilometer, given that it's France).
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
350 miles per hour = 563.2704 kilometers per hour
The Night's Dawn Trilogy, by Peter F Hamilton
ok it's not about trains running in vacuum tunnels, but they do appear in it somewhere, so I reckon it's relevant enough.
Great books, really good epic scifi. Vactrains are only the start of it, I promise.
At least on an aircraft you don't have to be concerned about earthquakes (and cattle).
Heard any good sigs lately?
at that speed they would probably be able to add a few barrel roll junctions instead of usual ones.
It'd be awesome to have one of these for the Boston to Washington D.C. route. You could go from Boston to New York in one hour and to Washington D.C. in two hours. Those travel times would be for the regular speed of this train, not the time trial. It'd never get funded though. Amtrak is essentially bankrupt.
How many people have been to the moon? Fewer than a dozen?. Anyone can ride a fast train in France. Who's wasting money?
I'll leave the 'blasting money into space' retort for someone else...I'm partial to the space program even though the ISS is the Ford Pinto of space projects...
However, a good high speed train would be great down here. LA to bay area...to Vegas... Holy crap, LA - Vegas train like that? Would pay for itself in probably 2 years. More practical than a plane, and more comfortable than a bus, and hella safer than dealing with the nutters on I-15.
Much more useful to have something like that in the US than another Hummer model, at the very least.
And I don't think the financial situation in the US as a nation is on solid enough ground that you can infer to it as better, even to France, but that's just an opinion.
Our rail system is a joke. Worse than a joke. It's not notable enough to use as a punchline.
My unsupported hunch is that a train would pollute more than a jet. I would think that trains would have a lot more drag. It sounds like you know what your talking about, but this is slashdot and everything.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
Let's see. The TGV train in question can cruise at about 320 mph. The distance from NYC to Los Angeles is about 2500 miles. So, the ride will take about 8 hours and 50 minutes. Non-stop.
So how long does it take to get from NYC to LA in real life? 1 hour to airport, 1 hour at the airport, 6 hours in the air, and 1 hour from the airport. So 9 hours. Right about the same. Only on the train you can relax and do whatever, while with the plane you gotta deal with all the hassle.
I was going to say that I didn't think the train would be competitive over such a great distance, but I proved me wrong..
You know, that made me feel good. Maybe we'll be able to cut down on flying after all!
Stop the brainwash
The plural of the English word "metropolis" is, indeed, "metropolises." If you want to be pretentious, the Latin plural is "metropoles," and the ancient Greek plural is "metropoleis." "Metropoli" is only used by idiots who don't know Latin but like to pretend they do, and "metropolii" is right out.
...the US put men on the Moon and developed the Shuttle. The French have fast trains. Whoopee Dooo.Yes the French have fast trains. They run almost everywhere. Not only are they fast, they are clean, quiet, comfortable, reasonably priced, on time, and have excellent beverage service. This includes all of the SNCF, not just the TGV. An added benefit is that the French are extremely polite about cell phone usage on the trains.
I am certain far more Americans have ridden on French trains than have ever ridden on Apollo or the Shuttle, and probably fewer have been killed.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
While having a 300 mph train is fascinating, I don't think this can ever work in metro regions of the United States and Amerika. All the posts lamenting of our lack of train travel here forget that we're a very large country. We have an amazing problem in most metro regions: grade crossings. The Blue Line commuter rail from Long Beach to Los Angeles is considered one of the most dangerous commuter trains in the world due to its numerous grade crossings, poorly-marked crossings and signals, and criss-crossing through residential neighborhoods.
Los Angeles may never have a viable subway like New York or London because the population density is way too sparse to make economic sense in most of the county. While a lower density city such as Atlanta has its Marta, you're not going to get Angelinos out of their cars. It's their right to drive solo and demand that their government build more freeways!
signature pending slashdot approval
another problem with the Boston-NYC Acela is that it runs through Connecticut.
CT isn't going to let a train go through it without a few stops. So whats the point of building track for 300mph if the train will be constantly starting and stopping?
Even in France, 9 in 10 passenger miles are not by rail.
In Soviet Russia, 9 in 10 passenger miles are walked.
The TGV isn't a commuter train. It's point-to-point transportation. We don't really have anything that's quite its equivalent here in the U.S. (anymore -- we did, once, back in the days of effective passenger rail and high-speed inter-urbans) because Amtrak is so fucked up. But you wouldn't be using this to get in and out of the city center to the 'burbs every day; you'd go into the city to get on one, to go to another city.
The infrastructure you'd need around a major intercity train station in the U.S. would be basically the same stuff you need around an airport; lots and lots of parking for people to leave their cars, access to local transportation, etc. The advantage of trains over planes, however, is that you can put the stations right downtown, hopefully maximizing the number of people who can get there without driving, by using existing public transportation, and also minimizing travel time for people who want to get to the city center as a destination.
About the only place in the U.S. where you can approximate this right now, is in the Northeast Corridor, going from say Washington, DC to New York. If you want to fly, you have to get from downtown DC out to one of the airports: if you're lucky, Reagan (practically downtown), if you're unlucky or flying on a discount airline, Dulles or BWI. Then you have to go through the usual security checkpoint rectal-probery, find the gate, board the plane, fly, get off the plane, find your luggage, and get to downtown NYC from JFK or LaGuardia. Total PITA. Amtrak, when it's not running late (granted, almost never), lets you walk into Union Station in downtown DC, walk onto the train, sit down for a few hours, and walk off at Penn Station. Platform to platform, the Acela is about three hours, and it's slower than molasses compared to the European trains.
Now, really the only reason that the Acela is borderline competitive, is because the airlines and the FAA seem to be trying as hard as possible to make the flying experience like getting in a boxcar bound for Auschwicz (but without the efficiency, and probably more lost luggage). If you got rid of all the security checkpoints and just compare travel time, the Acela barely scrapes 100MPH on most days (which is actually slower than the big 8'-driver steam passenger locomotives of a generation ago were capable of), so a jet going 400-500 MPH is obviously going to be faster. But if you can push the train up to 300+MPH, and realize that the airplane is always going to have more "overhead time" because of the distance you have to put airports from cities (to keep them from running into the buildings, noise, etc.), they become a lot more competitive.
Commuter trains are always going to be hobbled by low population density. However, high-speed inter-urban trains operate according to much the same business principles that airlines do. They just need to be much more careful in laying out their routes, because unlike airlines, it's tougher for them to just re-jigger flights when they're not making money. However, there are a number of routes that are probably almost guaranteed to be profitable in the U.S. if you can get the times down to within 100-150% of a plane flight: LA to San Francisco (and then SF to Seattle) is probably a good one on the West Coast, and maybe even LA to Las Vegas. The Boston-NYC-Philadelphia-DC corridor is already profitable with current technology, and would only get better. Extending it down to Atlanta would complete the "BAMA" corridor, and you could hit the high-tech areas in NC along the way, probably.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
We need an underground transport system, that works like IP packets.
You sit in a little metal pod in your house, and are accelerated into the main "backbone". Bluetooth/RFID/something that broadcasts your final destination enables the "routers" to switch your travel onto the routes that get you to where you're going.
Get your own free personal location tracker
as a 747.
Since we are talking about it....there is another cultural difference, which I mentioned... but didn't expand on. Mating options.
I am what you might call a "late bloomer". That is I am 28 and just kinda starting to date and find sexual partners etc. Sure I did a bit of that when I was a teenager and in my early 20s but not really much. I sort of started...then took a long hiatus... and am now sort of starting again.
One thing i have noticed in my ample trips out to the country in upstate NY anyway....
every woman over the age of 20 is married. The exceptions are almost unequivocally head cases (and I mean comparitivly so... as a man I think all women are head cases, much the same way they think I am a head case.... but I mean really batshit crazy here). I don't mean to cast aspersions, but its a trend I noticed.
The vast majority of the girls worth dating in the country marry young and have kids.
In the city, at 28, I know lots of people, and very few are married. The few that are, are usually at least in their 30s. Sure some my age are starting, some did earlier and whatnot. The point is, I have a lot more options here.
Essentially my "lifestyle" as a "late bloomer"... as one of those "confirmed bachelors" who happens to not actually be gay (been there, tried that, didn't really like it, my gay friends rate me a "kinsey 1").... is one that benefits from the city and isn't so viable outside. Not entirely unviable, but doesn't seem so for someone who does want to date and have the occasional female companionship in the night.
I really don't mean to sound like I look down on others lifestyles, but the country life is a bit limiting in ways the city isn't (and vice versa). For me.... the city is the obvious choice.
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
The Trains that amtrak runs from LA to seattle average out to 30MPH. They stop at every stinking town of 500 along the tracks, and have to pull over to let any cargo train go by, since amtrak doesn't own the tracks, the cargo companies do. I would love a Train that could hit 100+MPH, and stay that fast. I hate the restrictions and burdens of flying, and gas prices are a pain in the ass.
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
the record was set when the French engineer saw Chuck Norris walking up to catch a lift.
"You may all go to hell and I will go to Texas"
Sen. Davy Crocket to US Congress, Nov. 1, 1835
I really don't fancy being on there if something goes wrong with the routing and you wind up stuck in a circular route.
And what happens with dropped packets?
Now, it's possible that you get higher output of certain nasty things - you probably get more nitrogen oxides, for instance - but I can't imagine that they're five times worse. And, as you say, that doesn't include the mess that roads make.
~Idarubicin
Amtrak does own track between New York and Washington, and implemented the North East Corridor Improvement Program (NECIP) to improve the track.
In the Northeast corridor, one of the primary speed limitations is the Acela equipment, which meets the crash test standards required by the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA). I recall that those standards were eveloped after a lightweight aluminum "Highliner" collided with a standard steel commuter train in Chicago. European trains, for better or worse, don't meet the FRA standards.
Lovely.
The problem with passenger rail transport is it's very difficult to run it at a profit - especially if the infrastructure isn't there to begin with. Getting people out of cars and onto trains is much harder than the other way around. So it's not particularly attractive to private companies.
This is a problem in any country which has historically shied away from having the government run services.
The train was continuing the French tradition of running away
Despite being almost as hairy, I'm not your mom.
The enemies of Democracy are
Erm, I think you're neglecting to consider a few factors in your unsupported hunchery.
Consider the forces at work. A train has to keep itself in motion, which requires pushing air out of the way. It also has some rolling resistance.
The airplane, on the other hand, also has to keep itself in forward motion, but there's also a lot of energy being spent keeping that fucker up in the air. The shape of a plane's wings generate lift, but they do so at the cost of creating drag. Lots of drag, compared to a train. There's just no possible way that the plane is ever going to be as efficient, because not only are you moving it horizontally across the earth, you're also putting it (and holding it) some 30,000 feet off the ground. That's much more energy-intensive than overcoming the rolling resistance of a few wheels and bearings, particularly when the wheels are running on steel rail and you can optimize the hell out of the rest of the system. (As a civilization, we're pretty good at making things rotate with minimal resistance. Ironically, it's jet aircraft that have really brought the engineering of high-speed turbobearings to near-perfection.)
It would be pretty easy to run the numbers if you wanted to: just look at the fuel consumption in gallons per hour for a modern locomotive and a jet aircraft, multiply by the energy density of the fuel (aviation kerosene and diesel), and divide by the number of passengers in each. With trains that aren't in fixed trainsets, it would get a little difficult to figure out how many "passengers" to include, but you could get some ballpark numbers.
Anyway, other people have already run the numbers. Here's a comparison done by Eurostar comparing London to Paris by plane and train, in terms of CO2 emissions:
link. "The research shows that each passenger on a return flight between London Heathrow and Paris Charles de Gaulle generates 122 kilograms of CO2, compared with just 11 kilograms for a traveller on a London-Paris return journey by train."
Now, that's CO2 emissions, not energy consumption (although the two are basically directly proportional when you're getting your power via the combustion of petroleum products), and it's probably made somewhat artificially low because the French generate a lot of electricity from fission, which is CO2-neutral, but that's not enough to explain a tenfold decrease.
Physics just isn't on the side of the airplane in terms of energy efficiency. Anything that stays on the ground is going to have a huge advantage.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Texas: 695,621 km^2
France: 551,695 km^2
Yea, the EU couldn't fit inside one state...doubt even Alaska, and you said a normal US state anyway.
Trains may not make much sense on a nationwide scale, I doubt Denver - Cheyenne would be worth it, but between some close, but not too close, metro areas, it'd be ideal.
As mentioned in the article, San Diego - Los Angeles - San Francisco - Sacramento would be heavenly, considering how much traffic goes between those four locations daily. Los Angeles to Las Vegas would pay for itself in like, two years. Plus I'd use all of those routes.
While I don't live in Texas, it also seems linking Fort Worth/Dallas - San Antonio - Houston - Austin would be useful.
There's probably other locations where a trek of a couple hundred miles that this would be ideal for. (Phoenix - Tuscon, maybe?) It's not a nationwide solution, but in certain areas it could be a great boon to ease air congestion and road traffic in localized areas.
Don't worry; There will be a TTL of 255 which gets decremented at every hop.
Oh wait...
Most of the countries are in the 5-10% range. Japan is at 30, Switzerland is at 13. The US pulls in the rear at 0.13%. Nobody's saying rail is THE answer, there are many answers that are part of a bigger solution. Just imagine what would happen to our trade deficit if we cut our consumption of oil by 5-10%.
Sig cannot be found.
Easy: Toll the bloody bejeezus out of the freeways between good train routes. Truckers get a discount.
Also, are airlines really running a profit right now? Maybe Southwest, but oy...I just don't like them...
Plus I think if it was marketed properly, to the jetsetters in a local region, it could really pay off.
Who wants to spend 5 hours driving or waiting in an airport through delays and the security? Take the train. Gets you there just as fast and you won't lose your luggage, be hassled by an apathetic TSA lacky or lose your rental deposit.
Yea, I'm pipe dreaming here, but it makes logical sense...which, of course, is why it'll never happen.
I don't know what you have been smoking but Europe is actually bigger than the US.
I think the other issue is that competing modes of transportation get a lot of their infrastructure handed to them, basically for free or with big subsidies, by the Federal government.
If you're a bus company, you don't have to pay to use the roads, the government has already done all the hard work for you. You just drive on them. Same with over-the-road cargo trucking. This is a huge problem for freight railroads, who would otherwise beat the tar out of road trucking: except for UPS and other time-sensitive parcel-deliveries, there's really no reason to haul bulk goods by truck, when you can take the same containers even, and put them on a train and drag them around for a fraction of the fuel cost. But the freight railroads also have to pay, not only for their locomotives and rolling stock, but also for the right-of-ways, maintenance on the track, keeping them clear during the winter, etc. All the trucking industry pays for is whatever the government adds on as a tax to diesel fuel, plus their direct taxes. (And the fuel taxes don't even start to cover the budget for the Interstate system, which is hugely damaged each year by high-axle-weight vehicles like trucks.)
With aircraft, although they admittedly don't require a huge amount of infrastructure when they're in the air (and good thing, too), things like the navigational beacon systems that IFR relies on, plus the Air Traffic Control system/network, are government-run. Sure, some of it's funded with taxes, but I'll bet you it's not 100% self-funding.
I think we can go either way -- either have the government pick up the tab for maintaining the nation's rail network, and make it available to anyone who wants to use it, in the same way that the Interstate highway system and the Air Traffic Control network is, or make users of the ATC network and the Interstate highways pay for their entire budgets so that they're self-funding without any support (and have them pay back over time the cost already contributed) -- but we're only hurting ourselves with the current arrangement. Anything that encourages an inefficiency to continue is inherently bad, and we suffer as a result of it due to higher gas prices, and geopolitical conflicts that arise due to petroleum supplies.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
What record did it break? Fastest train to almost break the speed record?
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
Bullshit. There could be this exact sort of high speed rail between Boston and New York, Chicago and Detroit, and L.A. to Seattle with say 120 MPH connector trains in the flatlands for literally 1/10th the cost of Bush disastrous pointless war in Iraq. Follow the Benjamins it's all about the O I L companies in the U.S:
d _railh -Speed_Rail_Corridor_Designations_53kb.png
See for example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_high-spee
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/d3/Hig
Upgrading U.S. train track is 8 times cheaper than building new freeways:
http://www.fra.dot.gov/us/content/201
Get some fact before just regurgitating what you hear on Rush (brought to you by the Hummer H5 now including it's own entrance ladder).
Tired of all the isms, don't exploit people as an employer, or a government, mmmmK?
I'm confused... If it meets the requirements, than why is it not running faster?
AFAIK, between NYC and Boston it runs at higher speed for only a fraction of the distance — because the tracks are not good enough everywhere else. All hearsay, though...
The New York-Boston distance is only 230 miles or so. Even at modest (for a train) 120 miles/hour, that can be done in two hours. But it takes 3.5 hours or more, and the few stops Acela is making don't account for the 1.5 hour difference...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
If the US had a network of high-speed rail lines like this, why would the infrastructure surrounding getting on and off be any different than we currently suffer through with airlines? I would think that everything that causes delays and headaches with air travel (strict/braindead security, baggage check, cramped seats, etc.) would be present just as strong with a new-fangled supertrain. Hell, you can't even say that weather delays would be eliminated: snow can wreck havoc with rails as much as it can with runways!
I'm not saying it doesn't make sense: for high-density corridors, it's an awesome idea. And having a couple of cross-country "artery" routes would also be very cool. But you're kidding yourself if you think that you'll be any less inconvenienced by the experience when/if it happens.
Look at the tomato! Isn't it sad? He can't dance! Poor tomato!
Erm. Have you travelled outside the contiguous states? Were your HS geography lessons restricted to one country? 9.6 million square kilometres compared to 10.18 square kilometres
Slashdot: Where nerds gather to pool their ignorance
Every government agency (and every department of a corporation, for that matter) will complain of budget shortage, if asked...
The reason I called them morons is that with the limited resources given to them, they chose to buy expensive high-speed trains before getting tracks good enough to use the trains to their full potential...
While I agree with your opinion on the folly of highway subsidies (beyond the strategically-needed interstates), I must note, that certain commercial train-companies manage to compete with highways anyway. True, these are mostly cargo trains, but they compete against cargo-carrying tracks successfully in many markets.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Interesting. Somewhere around I have some rail maps of the Northeast, I'll have to take a better look at them sometime. I know that there are some places where in the 19th century they were remarkably aggressive about laying rail lines "as the crow flies" -- there is a particular old intra-urban line in Connecticut, now a bike path, that looks like it was laid out by a guy with a ruler on a map that didn't bother to note the topography; there are places where it has cuts and fills probably hundreds of feet deep. I think in fact it was originally nicknamed the "Sky Line" or something like that, but I can't find any information on it at the moment.
At any rate, I wonder if that's the case, whether using the right-of-ways already laid out by the Interstate highway network would be of any help?
When I first came down to Washington, DC, I was struck by the simplicity of one of the Metro lines, which runs in the central median of I-66 (one of the major arteries running out into Virginia). I expect that it would require some serious bridgework (or digging) in order to get the clearance required for double-decker trains, but then again that's a problem with existing rail lines that have bridges over them, too. (IIRC Amtrak spent a ridiculous sum raising bridges in order to allow the Acela to run where it currently does.)
There doesn't seem to be a lot of sense in going through all the pain of punching a new straight-line inter-city artery through (taking land by eminent domain, etc.) when it's already been done, in most cases, in order to construct the Interstates. To be honest, I've always been surprised that the Federal government doesn't try to market and generate some revenue from the Interstate right-of-ways: if you're a power or gas company and need a way to run a pipeline from one place to the other, the central median of a highway isn't a bad place to put it (suitably protected against collisions, obviously). Rather than just a highway, the Interstates should be viewed like conduit in a building: vehicular traffic might be its major function, but as long as you have it there, you might as well run inter-city trains, commuter rail and other infrastructure there.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
More practical than a plane, and more comfortable than a bus
Trains such as the French TGV, the Swiss ICN, or (even better) the Japanese Shinkansen, are far (FAR) more comfortable than a plane (I am talking economy class here).
I'm wondering how long Americans will ride along on things their parents did in the last century. Are we going to be like the French a hundred years from now? Still rich, but on the larger scale irrelevent, talking about how great we were back then?
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
You realize now that IP is an unreliable protocol? I'd hate to be involved in a packet collision in such a system, or worse, be a dropped packet!
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
The reason I called them morons is that with the limited resources given to them, they chose to buy expensive high-speed trains before getting tracks good enough to use the trains to their full potential...
Well, if you're Amtrak, which would you rather have the people do? Complain that the trains run too slow (they won't notice or care about the shiny new tracks) or complain that the new shiny trains they're on could run so much faster if only they had to good sense and money to improve the tracks? Seems to me like the latter would cause a greater public push for more funding for track improvement.
The I-95 Corridor between DC and NYC is so incredibly congested, it shocks even me, who tends not to be shocked by these things. And there's a flight between NYC and DC that ran late 100% of the time in 2006. 100%!
The biggest problem of all: while there are reasons to debate whether or not to take the train over the plane for a trip of about 250 miles or so, once the distance extends to about 400-450 miles, there's no effective alternative to air travel, so the airports get clogged and flights run late, and passengers need to suck it up because they have no other comparable choice.
More practical than a plane, and more comfortable than a bus, and hella safer than dealing with the nutters on I-15.
Yeah, but the 15 is part and parcel of the whole "Las Vegas Experience" - especially if you're a nutter.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
That's an important point. Electricity can be generated from many different sources of energy. Jet fuel can only be made from oil, and the airlines are barely hanging on with current oil prices. All energy will be more expensive in the future, but oil prices will most likely outpace electrical rates. Anyone want to bet how long before oil prices put the airlines out of business?
At least someone's working on a project that's beneficial to growing metropolises (metropolii?)
France makes a train going 350mph. What does the US make as it's engineering masterpiece? The H3... This is useless for intra-city travel. The only stretches of track that are going to be capable of carrying trains like this are long ones between major cities with no intermediary stops, not to mention the amount of distance you need to get up to speed and slow down. This will be used for Paris-Marseille and nothing shorter. In most cases, these high-speed trains cannot even utilize the same track as the medium and short range trains; they have to build a completely separate infrastructure to support the TGV, ICE, or what have you. Basically, they are targeting the market space currently occupied by short distance airlines, with business travelers as their primary target audience.
That is actually a major problem across western Europe right now. Train companies are slowly abandoning medium and short range stretches in favor of the more lucrative business traveler market, and investment in the medium and short range track and trains is languishing, resulting in deteriorating quality and frequency of service. As such, people are forced from the trains to private cars, which bring all the problems of pollution and urban sprawl that we Americans know so well. Furthermore, at these speeds trains do not run much more energy efficiently than planes either.
That is what happens when you privatize things that should be public services.
weirdest thing I ever saw: scientology advertising on slashdot.
There'd always have to be a "get-me-out-of-this" button for the users. And there could be valves to ensure that packets only went the same direction, so there'd be two tubes, one each way.
Get your own free personal location tracker
Yes, and in the 1800s US railroads were built with massive government subsidies - the Union Pacific got a free right of way, and half the land within 10 miles of that right of way! The difference between us and the Europeans is that we stopped subsidizing the railroads, let them deteriorate, and now subsidize them just enough to not fall apart completely. The Europeans (and the Japanese) spend the money on upgrades and maintanence. And it ain't private industry paying for the interstates, or the airports, in the US. Only rail is supposed to pay its own way.
Where the already lousy service die almost daily because some SOAB steals the rails or the wires that control the traffic lights to sell them as copper/iron/whatever. That, or because there's a union mafia conflict and they burn the traffic computers and equipment, etc, etc, etc.
Oh.. don't tease, I dream of the day when the US is as "irrelevant" as France...
Also - when Amtrak was assembled years ago, each congress-critter wouldn't sign on unless a stop was added in his district, slowing down the trains and making them even less competitive. When you take Amtrak, you'd be amazed how many stops you make in little towns of 200-300 people and wonder "WTF?!"
Both Switzerland Germany have a very extensive rail service that makes a profit.
...
It can be done, but clearly it won't work if it's not done right.
Think about it, a train from LA to San Diego / North California, no need to stay in traffic for hours, save on gas, save on car maintenance, save on traffic accidents, save on nerves getting stretched while waiting in traffic,
It makes so much sense, what doesn't make sense is the american people's love for traffic.
Actually, California has announced they're building it by 2009 from San Diego to parts north.
So, even if your country isn't building it, your state might be.
Please note even Vietnam and China have high-speed passenger rail lines under construction.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
"On that train, all graphite and glitter
Undersea by rail
Ninety minutes from New York to Paris
Well, by '76 we'll be A.O.K."
50 years later, no such luck.
I would rather they don't knowingly misuse (waste!) taxpayers' money, as you agree with me they did. It is a waste, because by the time they get tracks good enough for Acela's full speed, the trains will be (near-)obsolete, and need replacement...
They should've spent it on tracks, or they should've said upfront, that this does not make sense: "Either we get funds for both tracks and trains, or don't give us anything now."
It is that second part, that's impossible for most people to say, I guess... Especially for the likes of Dukakis...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
The other problem is density..
Texas: 20,851,820 people
France: 60,876,136 people
Texas: 30 people/km^2
France: 110 people/km^2
Is this still the case, though? Business-class airline tickets are going through the roof right now. My 5,000-ish-person company just dropped their deal with American Express (which runs a travel agency) because AmEx wanted to nearly triple our rates. We couldn't bargain them down. Since we frequently need to travel between Boston, NYC, and Virginia on short notice, paying the going airline rates was not feasible. We've switched to Acela whenever we need a quick trip-- but Acela is getting hard to book on short notice due to demand. I suspect we're not the only ones in this position.
Something like Acela, which is clearly a success (compare the time spent waiting in the airport to fly from Boston to New York, and the actual amount of time it takes to get to New York from Boston on the train-- Acela wins), makes me think that if Amtrak can't get that service profitable, they're doing something very wrong. Of course, I know nothing about Amtrak, except that it has been in the middle of a political tug-o-war for a long time-- maybe that's why they can't get their shit together.
These 'packets' of yours are known as CARS. In the real world, though, we don't bury the tracks as that it an unbelievably expensive way to build a network. And, inn the real world, the switches are dumb but the packets are smart.
easier thing : TGV are electric. Most of our centrals are nuclear ones.
;)
Would you invade a country mad enough to blow itself up ?
Acela is a nice improvement, seeing as how it's an objectively better service and it points out the need for better tracks. So it's not ideal, but it's a win for trips under 250 miles.
However, the foundations of a high speed rail line can be as much as twenty feet deep, and seperation will be required between the tracks and shoulders outside of the tracks. The materials saving is less than you might think.
True, but Amtrak (along with NASA) is one of the few that has a legitimate reason to complain.
Well, that's just because long-haul trucking is even more mind-bogglingly idiotic than commuting by car!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Nice numbers... here's some others.
Florence, Italy -> Rome, Italy: 275km
Houston, TX, USA -> Austin, TX, USA: 162miles (260km)
Everybody who keeps comparing the EU to the USA and saying how cities in Europe are so much closer are only thinking about things like LA to SF, or even from either of those to New York. Nobody in Europe is going to take a train to get from Oslo to Lisboa either (well, some people do - just as some in the U.S. take roadtrips from coast to coast).
What upsets me, is that American "Acela" train can also run pretty fast (even if not as fast as these bullet-trains) -- but is not, because the tracks aren't suitable for higher speeds.
There's also the pesky political issue wherein trains are not allowed to exceed 90mph in the state of Connecticut.
...It's not likely we'll see steel-wheel trains go faster than 350 km/h (217 mph) in the near future in commercial service.
The reason is simple: physical contact. At these very high speeds, the physical contact force between between the overhead wiring and pantographs on the train and the the steel wheels and the steel rail is ENORMOUS, requiring strong, expensive metals to keep physical wear as low as possible. Remember, the record was done on a very short train under extremely tight tolerance conditions not encountered in regular service.
Japan solved that by having multiple tiers of trains. I'm not sure what the exact terms are, but there are express trains that stop only at the point of origin and the destination, then there are semi-express trains that only stop at major interchanges, then there are standard trains which make every stop.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
That adds a whole new meaning to "time to live", doesn't it?
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is usually crucified.
Also - when Amtrak was assembled years ago, each congress-critter wouldn't sign on unless a stop was added in his district, slowing down the trains and making them even less competitive.
The vast majority of these stops were part of the existing passenger service, which AmTrak was obliged to maintain.
"Yes the French have fast trains. Not only are they fast, they are clean, quiet, comfortable, reasonably priced, on time ..."
You had me there. For a short second I thought you are speaking about the French people.
It seems to me that it would much easier to cause a train wreck, than to blow up an airplane. With a train moving that fast, the slightest damage to the track would cause a wreck. Somebody could put a simple bomb on the tracks, and be miles away when the bomb went off. To blowup an airplane, a terrorist would have to on it, or have some sophisticated weapons.
Your web page link is broken. Also sendding people to the moon is so sixties, here we are talking about moving thousands of people a day at high speed in a fashion convenient enough that they can use it as part of their daily commute. This adds flexibility to people's living arrangements such that you don't have to make the choice of "Do I live in a tight apartment with my family screaming for space and yet have a good job, or do I live in remote region with a lesser job/drive 4 hours a day". Urban transport technology and infrastructure is cutting edge stuff.
Australian running a company that does C# / C++ / Java / SQL / Python / Mathematica
350 mph does not mean much to me, when I saw this on Daily Planet, a Canadian TV show, the figure was presented as 574.8 km/h as it was in France, then it made an impression on me. I know what 100, 120, or 160 km/h means, 574.8 km/h is frigging fast! The film was impressive.
The approach now seems to be to try to be poor and irrelevent. A few more pointless wars at once, outsourcing everything but service industries and a lot more borrowing money from overseas to build houses should do it. Most of the allies of the USA already have better economic ties to China so would be tempted to back China instead in anything other than a minor dispute.
Same here in Canada. VIA Rail (Canada's national passenger rail company) still uses slow, diesel burning engines; and, depending on the route, stops at every podunk town along the way. Freight trains seem to get priority too. I remember taking the VIA train from Ottawa to Toronto one Xmas. Our train stopped in Smith's Falls, took on passengers, and waited. .
I'd give my left nut to see something like the TGV here in Canada, running between Windsor and Quebec City. And from what I understand Bombardier has the North American rights to TGV technology (and god knows they receive a shitload in government subsidies). But if there was ever an attempt to build such a thing cities and towns along the route would probably regulate the speed the train travels at through their towns (noise, and all that). Plus Johnny and Jane Canuck would rather drive down the 401 in their SUV and stop at the Timmy's drive-thru to get some coffee and doughnuts I guess.
Jesus Saves
India is a very very corrupt country, with more than half the money going to politicians pockets, and not to mention pilferage by govt. officers. Inspite of that the Indian Railway system carries millions of people each day, and makes a profit too.
Its not a question of "making profit difficult". Its more a case of "Lack of will" in the US
My Aurora : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o91ZsGwJYyg
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LA to San Francisco is 400 miles, which is a little longer than the distance from Berlin to Munich. That's a route that bypasses any medium to large sized California city, which pretty much means the passengers on the train would be riding only from LA to San Fran. Any other route going through a different route in the central valley would be a significant distance longer, going through San Jose would add maybe 50-75 miles to the route. It's hard to imagine a train running that distance being profitable with no cities on the way to load/unload passengers. And once you start adding stops, the train gets slower to the point where it's much, much faster to just take a plane.
The US lacks the population density to run a rail service for a profit anywhere but the northeast. Any large-scale rail service like what is done in Europe would have to be done at a massive loss by the government. Some things would have to change dramatically for that to happen.
The reason American's "love traffic" is because it is fast and convenient. Train service, unless done exceptionally well, is not either.
The thing that killed the American rail industry was not the automobile but labor unions. That's why it would still fail to this day. Right now, rail workers and engineers are fairly unskilled (compared to their European counterparts). Granted, the people working the rail system here are good people, and they all want to work in their jobs, but they are not the best in the world. They have strong union ties, which prevents the rail companies from firing the workers and hiring cheaper labor. In order for us to replace the rails in this country with a decent system like the French, it would take billions and it would also take a total workforce replacement. The current rail workers are not capable of doing quality track at good prices. You would need 100x the current number of rail workers and a total top-down replacement of the engineers to retrack the country in under a decade.
Also, America is quite a big bigger than France area-wise. And more mountainous.
Incidentally, it's the labor unions who are again destroying the American auto industry now. So, maybe there is a chance for rail again. With GM's balls cut off, Chrysler probably getting dumped by Daimler to some chinese owners, Ford just being Ford, it might be the only chance for American industry to fight back against the rise of Toyota. Or maybe Toyota itself will build the new trains, since they are so good at stuff.
The American way is blah. We are an economic superpower because our factories never got bombed in WWII. We don't have good management and our engineers suck. We really need to step it up. Europe is already past us again, although they cheated and unified, but they would have been anyway. America is full of farmers, ranchers, and insurance salesmen. Engineers are very very rare. The few thousand on slashdot might be the exception to the rule, but I'm sure most of you know a shitty engineer somewhere...
Also, I'm sorry to be so down on labor unions, it's sortof like kicking them when they are already down. But they didn't work. They managed to suck the life out of a lot of great american industries. However, why not let China make the stuff for us? I mean, really. They ship us shittonnes of stuff every day, made of metal, plastic, silicon, and more. And what do we ship them? Paper. Well, not even paper, the promise of paper, in the form of little ones and zeros in a bank transaction packet. Information basically. So we are getting physical shit for information.
The problem is that they are taking that information over to the middle east and buying oil with it, and they're taking that information up to Russia and buying minerals with it.
Luckly, they buy the oil from Exxon, so the information comes back here. And then we use it to get more physical shit.
I mean, isn't this a scam? I don't really care because I'm on the benefitting end of it, and I guess China can use the fake growth to put it's people to work, educate a few hundred million of them enough to improve the quality of life over there. But still, it's all based on confidence, which is of course where the word "con" comes from.
I highly recommend buying gold, btw.
Anyway, the trains are a good idea, and I don't know why we haven't done it yet. With the immense growth of air travel, you'd think someone would look at the train business again. But, think about how much damn steel it would take to run 4000 miles of rail cross-country. It would cost a lot in energy to move all that steel, even if it's on the track behind the work crews... Of course, that would enliven the steel industries. But just getting rid of SUV's would save more energy.
Pure opinion, sorry.
Cool! Amazing Toys.
Acela works in the northeast because the population density is high enough, and there is enough travel between the major cities to make a profit. For example, LOTS of business people travel between Boston, NY, and Washington. But there really isn't any regular business travel between cities outside the northeast. A Los Angeles-based business traveler is as likely to go to New York as Seattle.
Sure, an LA->Las Vegas line would probably do well because of tourist travel (and desert land is cheap), but a San Diego->LA->San Jose->San Francisco->Sacramento line is not going to do well. There's simply not enough demand for all the infrastructure costs.
Wasn't there some kind of project along those lines a few years back?
I disagree. It is the technology that requires more security for airplaines than for trains. A TGV is much more robust than a plane. Plant a bomb in a plane and the outcome is most probably a plane crash with maximal casualties. Plant a bomb in a TGV: this has been done twice (to my best knowledge). 2 persons killed the first time, 3 light injuries the second time.
http://www.ina.fr/archivespourtous/index.php?vue=n otice&from=fulltext&num_notice=6&total_notices=16& mc=police%20scientifique
This fact, in turn, generates a virtuous circle for the train: terrorists are not interested in planting bombs in the TGV because it is just not worth it. And that's why you'll always have significant security delays for planes, where I frequently rush to arrive at the station only minutes before the TGV departure.
The problem is some asshole will patent it and make it too expensive to implement during our lifetimes, even if it's totally economically, physically, technologically possible. The only thing really lacking is motiviation. If someone made this system, sold the idea big time to the American people, got donations going from big companies, made a little trial version in a smaller city such as Cleveland or something; well. anyway.
Cool! Amazing Toys.
Uh, actually, it's up to the H15 right now and it has an entrance ESCALATOR. Climb? What will you suggest next? Walking?! And I'm only mentioning the escalator because you mentioned your entrance "ladder"; I never leave my H15. In fact, the driver's bed is so comfortable that I never want to hoist my 1250 pound frame to the entrance anyway? What would I need to leave for? I have all the drive-thrus I want, full-service fuel stops and a wide screen television with 25 hours of Fox War a day. Jesus, save these peace loving, tree hugging, homosexual infidels, with their functioning legs and minds, broken themometers and . Jesus, when are you going to take us to your H15 in the sky?
Cool! Amazing Toys.
Don't knock federal highway subsidies--it's the way the government bribes states into following federal laws instead of doing their own thing as the framers intended.
Cool! Amazing Toys.
Even Via Rail's economy class is more comfortable than a plane. I took a train trip from Vancouver to Halifax and back. I enjoyed it thoroughly. On the way back, I took the trains all the way home without stopping, except for transfers during the day. So, I spent 5 continuous nights on a train. It was awesome.
I think that a lot of the problems that we encounter are simply because we don't have a public railroad, whereas the skys and roads are probably relatively free.
testing out my trending skills
India has perhaps got the largest rail network in the world. The fastest train in Indian Railways network hardly ever crosses the 200 kph barrier, given the heavy traffic across its network, no matter what technological innovations in tracks/signaling/locomotive engineering are used. I don't what is the story in China. But if anyone has to travel at such high speeds, then airplane is a much viable alternative.
It's not idiotic per se. Inefficient, perhaps (okay, for sure) but it's direct and very fast when compared to rail freight.
Railroads prefer to concentrate on long hauls and bulk loads. They have little or no interest in LCL (less than carload) freight or local car spotting since it's a money-losing proposition and besides, they have removed much of their local trackage over the last fifty years. This means that relatively few shippers have direct rail access to their facilities any more. So, even if you ship by rail, your freight ends up on a truck for the first and last portions of the trip anyway. Since it's often cheaper and always faster to ship relatively small loads via truck, why even bother with doing it by rail?
If you want to talk about the environmental costs of trucks vs. rail or federal subsidies of the Interstate Highway System, that's a whole different thing. Looking at it strictly from a shipper's viewpoint, however, there's nothing idiotic about it at all.
This ain't rocket surgery.
Yeah, it could have a few seats in, maybe room at the back for luggage, and to save needing a complicated infrastructure to coordinate them all, the person in each pod could direct it themselves via some sort of round 'steering' device. We'd better patent this quick.
http://www.exile.ru/2003-October-02/war_nerd.html.
Me no French.
The French also have an effective space programme with a pretty good launcher (Ariane) - and it's killed far fewer people than the US space programme ;-)
----------------------------------- My Other Sig Is Hilarious -----------------------------------
"probably fewer have been killed" : 0 death in 25 years because of accidents. And yes, once a TGV derailed at almost 200mph : just minor injuries.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TGV#Safety
AWx
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I disagree. Paris -> Marseille is 480 miles (check on http://www.mappy.fr/). It is a 1h15 plane flight. The TGV trip time is 3 hours (check on http://www.sncf.com/). It is 3 h. Paris downtown to Marseille downtown. Without all the hassles of going to, through, and coming from the airports. From my point of view, at 480 miles the TGV still beats the plane.
The FRA crash standards mean a heavier train. That takes longer to accelerate/decelerate, and somewhat limits the tilting technology that can be used. That, and curves, and interlocking, all adds up. Acela averates 65 mph NY to Boston, vs. about 42 mph for a typical long-distance train - if the LDT is on time.
French trains between big cities (TGV and Corail) are rather nice. But it is not always so great. Suburb trains (between Paris and the surrounding crowded area) are often late, somtimes a bit old. Some lines in rural areas get only the old cars from big cities.
Price is another matter, it depends on the people, I don't complain.
One problem is that the rail company (SNCF) focuses on big lines (TGV especially) and investment in suburb lines is lacking. Thanks to the decentralization, the situation is improving in some areas: the "régions" (like small regional states with a few million people each) are now paying and want results.
A bigger problem is the lack of investment to move all the freight on trains. The number of trucks on our roads is scary.
Christophe (Don't hesitate to point out my spelling and grammar mistakes, I want to learn - Thanks).
Wait, let me get back to you on this...
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
A dozen years ago, when the earliest french speedtrain was deployed between Paris and Lyons (some 500Km away) the french airlines that provided the equivalent transportation just had to close their slots on this destination, because they almost were just abandoned in a matter of months.
Today, even though the TGV train cannot highspeed in some areas (because its rails still have to be adapted: smoother bends etc.), a 800-km travel takes you almost the same time rail/air unless you happen to live in front of the airport.
There are not a lot of things a french can be proud of nowadays given our present government, but TGVs are one of them, all the more in the perspective of costlier fuel and pollution...
Herve S.
You have just described the Personal Rapid Transit concept. Though most PRT proposals have the rails raised above the ground, not buried in tunnels.
For a few months now, smoking is banned in most public places in France. Bars and restaurants have a grace period until 2008, when they too will not legally be able to allow smoking. Believe it or not, the French seem to be respecting the new restriction, for the most part.
12
EU: 4,324,782 km
USA: 9,631,420 km
(From wikipedia)
No it isn't
US:9,629,091 km
EU:4,422,773 km
.. it is still considered a small miracle if a train actually appears, let alone be on time.
Insert
You would have the LA - SF train stop at only a few stations on the way, Santa Barbara, SLO, Santa Cruz for example. Then connect smaller towns with commuter rail.
The foundations of a six lane highway are also pretty deep too, if you've ever watched one being built.
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I live in the UK, so I used to spend a lot of time on trains. Here's some questions that people often forget to ask though...
So you drive to a station in SF and park - where does all this space magically come from for parking? Parking in SF felt like getting mugged, only less kind and polite.
Then you hop onto a train and head for LA... You get there, and then what? How do you get around? You rent a car at the other end? That might be fine for a business traveller, but for someone with kids, etc. that makes it a nightmare. It also negates the cost savings of using mass transport.
Then lets chuck in delays. I don't use trains in the UK any more because I can't afford to. Missing a business meeting costs me money, and on the three occasions (over 5 months) that I used trains for long distance travel, I missed my meetings. That's despite planning to arrive 1 hour early on each occasion! So unless you have 100% confidence in your ability to deliver, no-one is going to use the system.
You need a lot more than just some track. You need convenient mass transit at both ends of the journey, you need a lot of other infrastructure to make this work.
This, of course, is completely wrong.
Those high speed trains run just fine on normal tracks. They won't run with such high speed, of course, but the whole idea is that you don't need a completely new infrastructure to run those trains. You only have designated high speed tracks (which are usually pretty straight and don't have any crossings or so) between the major cities.
Zurich, for example, is served by both train types, the TGV and the ICE (connecting Köln, Frankfurt, Berlin and Paris). There is no such thing as a high speed track in Switzerland (the fastest track will eventually permit 200km/h when they get in-train signaling sorted out). Those trains will run at their full potential when they reach their designated high speed track (for example between Freiburg and Frankfurt and Köln).
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
I believe we already have that. It isn't underground but it pretty much works as you describe. In the transportation world it is called the personal transportation system, where things like cars, motorcycles and even taxis are included.
Slashdot, fix your code or at least hire someone who is competent at it to do it for you.
I live in an european country (Portugal) where the current government is planning on building two major transportation facilities, one being a new national airport (Ota airport) and the other being a high speed train that crosses the country and connects it to the rest of Europe's high speed train network (as France's TGV). Both projects are very expensive and at the moment there is an ongoing debate about them. Moreover, Portugal is not a rich country. Yet, both projects will not come even close at "bankrupting the country". What makes you believe that France's TGV network bankrupted them but a tiny, poor country like Portugal can support not only a high speed train but also a new national airport?
I tell you what. Ignorance, prejudice and stupidity.
Slashdot, fix your code or at least hire someone who is competent at it to do it for you.
Japan seems to be doing a pretty good job so far.
OSx86 FTW
...so please also report measurements in the metric system for those of us who live in more advanced countries. thank you.
When you think of it in terms of the speed of sound, it's pretty impressive, just under half the speed of sound at sea level!
Be nice to people on the way up. You will meet them again on your way down!
Actually, the US passenger rail service was pretty much destroyed by... the US government, on behalf of the Motor Carriers. Guess who had the better lobby?
About any rail system I have ever travelled with uses that distinction. With the possible exception of the U.S. rail (and yes, I went from St. Clara, CA to SF via rail).
And there are lots of hybrid systems. Karlsruhe, Germany for instance has an intertwined streetcar/local railway network, where local trains ride through town on streetcar rails. The relation Nuremberg-Munich is handled by a RegionalExpress train, which doesn't stop between the towns and runs on a new highspeed track, even though it is handled by the regional transport company (DB Regio).
What about brakes? Zooooooommm should not be Pooooooooooooom traaaash craaaash,,
yes it is
US:9,629,091 km
EU:10,176,246 km
Sorry that should be Europe rather than EU
According to Wiki*, there was, and according to that it seems Southwest successfully lobbied to scuttle it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail_in_th e_United_States
*Disclaimer: I'm aware of the problems of using Wiki as a reliable source of information, but as this is slashdot and not a research paper, so nuts to that.
As to the checked baggage - don't do it. If you have to, only check clothes and toiletries. It's silly to leave jewelry or an iPod or anything valuable in it. I don't buy the "NWA made me check it" story because you always have the room under your seat. If you don't because it's a bulkhead row, change seats with someone who will be happy to have more legroom. Worst case, take your laptop out of your bag and stick it in the pocket in front of you. I do this all the time during takeoff and landing with a 15"+ widescreen laptop, so it's easily done.
I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it by not dying. - Woody Allen
Life needs more saving throws.
A TGV train has reached a speed of 563 km/h, setting a record set in 1990. The train had larger-than-usual wheels and its engine produced roughly 25,000 horsepower. This has brought wheeled trains surprisingly close to the absolute record holder Japanese MAGLEV trains, with a record of 580 km/h.
[SHOW SOME LENIENCY TOWARDS
Acela "racing" a Metroliner
Acela passing at 135MPH
Another Acela passing through before the warning announcement can finish
The limitation above NYC is the tracks between New Rochelle, NY and New Haven, CT being owned by Connecticut Department of Transportation, which imposes a 90MPH (144 km/h) limit on all trains, partly because of antiquated catenary, partly because the ex-New Haven trackage is not spaced far apart to allow Acela trainsets to employ their tilting mechanisms (there would only be 11 inches of clearance between passing trains). Oh, and Federal regulations here require passenger equipment operating on US railroads to have carbodies that can withstand 800,000 pounds of compression (buff load) without damage. The only European trainsets that might approach this are the Virgin Pendolinos, amply demonstrated in the recent UK derailment:
--Sir Richard Branson, Virgin Rail CEO(http://www.nationalcorridors.org/df2/df02262007.
---PCJ
(you might have to copy/paste that last URL--
Oh yeah, forgot to mention--the route from New York City to Boston makes the equivalent of thirteen complete circles owing to the multiple curves on the route.
---PCJ
I've watched both being built - which is the origin of my comment that the difference in enviromental impact may be less than you night. I missed another impact in my original message too - where possible the railroad frequently provides an acess road adjacent to the track. If the train is electrical, there is also the trackside infrastructure for electrification that must considered.
I suspect that the impact of a train system overall is in fact less than a highway system, but I am not certain that the difference is actually as great as one might think at first glance.
Bravo! I award you a symbolic mod point as I currently have no real ones.
Ceci n'est pas une sig.
The food is good, and they have good beer too. I typically grab a hot dog and a pair of Black Butte Porters on the trip, and having a power outlet at every seat makes using a laptop nice and easy.
Well the Union is smaller, that's right, but the GP mentioned Europe quite a bit of times more than EU. But if we really want to go nit-picking, he actually says the entire EU fits easily within any US state which is obviously wrong.
Good, but not good enough to break to fastest record.
Though, i think they are on the right track, and they just need more training.
Have you read my journal today?
The problem with trying to actually run the numbers is that it's difficult to quantify the fuel consumption of a railroad locomotive. Unlike a plane, you can configure a train in a variety of ways, and what's really of note is the fuel consumption per passenger-mile.
The U.S. government used to compile such statistics, but they ceased doing it in 1963. The last year such numbers were available, trains averaged approximately 41 passenger-miles per gallon of diesel, but this represents a national average, including many trains that may have been underutilized (and which really shouldn't have been operated but were for political reasons). What's interesting is that in 1945, when they were really using the equipment at maximum capacity, the economy more than doubled to 83 passenger-miles per gallon (of diesel equivalent).
I suspect that it's a vast lowball compared to modern trains, given the level of diesel technology in 1963. To put that in perpective, a modern Greyhound bus is almost twice that, and a bus is using an internal-combustion engine, on a relatively high-friction surface, and its drag profile is far less attractive than a train (cross section vs volume). So I suspect that a modern diesel-electric is significantly more efficient.
Looking at modern high-speed, inter-city trains, there's a little more data available. Wikipedia has a nice compilation. The TGV in particular, when fully loaded, gets around 506 passenger-miles per gallon diesel equivalent. The only modern diesel listed is a DMU-based (self-propelled cars) train with double-deck cars, and fully loaded they claim 328 pmile/gal.
To compare to aircraft, Boeing claims as high as 162 pmiles/gal (of Jet-A, I think), depending on how full the aircraft is, others get numbers that range down around 100, with occasional environmentalist estimates in the 30s. The national average is allegedly around 50 according to Wikipedia (same page as earlier).
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
"The problem with passenger rail transport is it's very difficult to run it at a profit"
Right, unlike the profitable highways or the profitable airline industry (be sure to include the costs of airport maintenance, airport access maintenance, etc). Human transport is generally *not* a profitable sector. This expectation that rail make the big bucks while we heavily subsidize our other transportation forms is a mystery.
-josh
True. I meant for the United States. In France and Germany, yes... trips of 400-500 miles are perfectly reasonable to do by train. In the US, not so much.
Note to self: obviously not offensive enough. :-)
Insert
This made sense when American automotive was a powerhouse, cheap cars in the states and a local market for testing was a very good business decision.
Now that Japan is moving towards automotive dominance (In everything but the high end.) it doesn't make sense anymore.
Americans love to say that having cars allows them more green space, and space in general.
The truth is it does but not very much, a large percentage of cities is used in roadways (more than Europe where the downtown core is often pedestrian only).
A good example is a mall, surrounded by highways with a thin line of ugly grass and tiny trees seperating the highway from a gigantic parking lot.
Then a sidewalk to keep people from getting hit by cars in the parking lot.
In much of Europe this is replaced by subway access to the mall with plaza's making up much of the surrounding area, beautiful fountains and public performances.
In Canada we have the same problem, and it's going to take years to fix.