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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.'"
accidents, traffic conjestion
Trains crash and get held up sometimes too.
No endless stream of internal combustion engines with associated CO2 emissions and other nastyness.
In the US due to lack of density you'd likely get diesel trains so you still get CO2.
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.
Welcome to the concept of express lines.
The US is lamentably far behind
The US is not population dense as a whole and gas is cheap. Trains are simply not economical.
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.
We'll run out of oil long before we run out of raw materials to build cars with. Also cars can last for quite a while, just because we want the new shinny thing doesn't mean we must have it. Trains need to be replaced as well every so often.