• IamMoonPie@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    2 months ago

    Ughh this comment section. Americans are so dumb?m, and yes I speak for myself as well. We have been so propagandized my exemptional individualism that when we’re presented with something that could benefit all of we turn and run. It’s so god damn stupid.

  • eksb@programming.devEnglish
    0·
    2 months ago

    These trains would run at capacity all the time, being full of New Yorkers going to Chicago to get good pizza and immediately returning.

  • Hond@piefed.socialEnglish
    0·
    2 months ago

    Fuck Maglev.

    Regular ass trains on steel tracks can go >200mph if built to spec. Suuuure, maglev can go even faster. But regular ass trains on steel tracks can actually be build on a realistic budget. Like in theory atleast. But before the US does something this sane they’re gonna nuke themselves. idk

    • Asetru@feddit.orgEnglish
      0·
      2 months ago

      Maglev isn’t even more expensive. High speed rails that are built “to spec” for 400 km/h are expensive as fuck. Trains are usually shorter but frequency is higher, so per passenger it roughly evens out.

      The real deal breaker is the lack of compatibility. Can’t ever run a maglev train on legacy rail while your high speed train can use the existing system to bridge gaps in the high speed network.

    • BL4CKP1XX13 [they/it]@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      0·
      2 months ago

      I don’t know much about various train technologies, but surely that’s going to cause massive wear and tear on the tracks and need to be serviced very often right? And any debris on the track is probably going to cause quite bad damage to the wheels too.

      I don’t know, but I feel like your “if built to spec” is doing a lot of heavy lifting here, what kind of spec? Is that sort of quality realistic for a real-world installation? Exposed to the elements?

      Maglev is definitely more expensive to build and probably to run, but it seems like it’d be far more reliable? And also a much smoother experience for those on-board?

      And I feel like Maglev has much greater theoretical speed limits than typical contact tracks, as, well, we basically remove the friction between the wheel and the track?

      Also imo Maglev is cool and gets style points.

      • TranscendentalEmpire@lemmy.todayEnglish
        0·
        2 months ago

        In the end the maintenance cost for maglev vs bullet trains are about the same. Bullet trains focus more on mechanical maintenance of the track and wheels. While the maintenance of maglev is typically more technical, it requires constant recalibration of the electronics and constant monitoring for alignment.

        Maglev is definitely more expensive to build and probably to run, but it seems like it’d be far more reliable? And also a much smoother experience for those on-board?

        Traditional steel on rail is actually more reliable in practice. Theoretically the basic mechanics of maglev are more reliable, but in practice they tend to suffer from longer delays when they do fail. This is mostly because the repairs/maintenance for traditional rail can be done by just about anyone, where maglevs tend to be locked in by a single vendor contract.

        Maglev has much greater theoretical speed limits than typical contact tracks, as, well, we basically remove the friction between the wheel and the track?

        They are theoretically faster, but in practice the speed of trains are most often governed not by the limitations of the trains themselves, but instead are limited by the surrounding infrastructure and terrain.

        The cruising speed of railed bullet trains are around 200mph, while the cruising speeds of maglev is around 265mph. Maglevs have gone significantly faster around 375mph, but thats not really a realistic expectation for daily operations.

        Imo both are extremely cool, but traditional rail is just a lot more practical for a plethora of reasons. The most important being that the installation and operational cost are just a lot more realistic than maglev. There’s a reason there’s only a total of 37 miles of maglev in operation today compared to over 30k miles of high-speed rail.

        • stoy@lemmy.zipEnglish
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          2 months ago

          Remember that the TGV has the high speed record for rail, at 574kmh or 356mph

          • TranscendentalEmpire@lemmy.todayEnglish
            0·
            2 months ago

            Yeah, but it’s not something you would ever see in operation. The V150 trial had special modified and powered cars running on the most favorable railway conditions possible. Plus, running over 200mph on steel starts to create enough friction to damage the wheels and rail.

      • SeductiveTortoise@piefed.socialEnglish
        0·
        2 months ago

        Most industry nations around the world are running high speed trains by now. They’re doing petty fine I’d say. China threw a ton of money into German maglev tech and there isn’t really much to see still. There’s a reason most countries gave up on it.

          • SeductiveTortoise@piefed.socialEnglish
            0·
            2 months ago

            Ich wünsche mir die Zeit zurück, in der ich über Politiker fast ausschließlich lachen musste, statt mich endlos über sie aufzuregen.

            Nicht, dass es da nicht auch genug Gründe gegeben hätte, aber zwischendrin kam immer mal wieder etwas raus was nicht komplett gestört war.

        • BL4CKP1XX13 [they/it]@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
          0·
          2 months ago

          I reckon it’ll be one of those things that was just ahead of it’s time, I think the concept is sound, but other infrastructure to run it, energy, rare-earth mining, just isn’t ready to keep up yet.

      • kestrel7_7@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        2 months ago

        “It seems like this experimental tech is going to be more reliable than the proven thing that’s existed since the 19th century.”

        You sure about that, hoss?

      • CompactFlax@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
        0·
        2 months ago

        Built to spec does do a lot of heavy lifting. American distances are larger than European distances. China has the advantage of a dictatorship which can be decisive.

        But the Interstate system was expensive and had a crazy spec and was built and continues to be maintained at an extremely high cost.

        Last I heard, maglev is mostly vaporware. Just build good tracks.

        • Hond@piefed.socialEnglish
          0·
          2 months ago

          tbf idk on which behalf you argue about american distances. But i feel(!)¹ like thats another reason to prefer regular ass trains(with implied heavy lifting specs). Like it is known that you can build >tenthousand miles of regular high speed tracks to build a tight network between major cities. It has been done. America doesnt even have the huge issue of several differing national standards which are in competition to eachother but still want to be connected ideally like in europe.

          ¹am just random idiot on the internet.

          • CompactFlax@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
            0·
            2 months ago

            Track maintenance is expensive and even more so when in remote areas. Population density is much lower in USA than most of Europe so km rail per person is just much higher.

            Hasn’t stopped the interstate system from taking billions of dollars a year though.

            Building a strong high speed rail in dense areas like New England and Midwest probably would be a good starter because people can see how well it works. But there’s so much carbrain inertia.

            • SwingingTheLamp@piefed.zipEnglish
              0·
              2 months ago

              Indeed, that’s really only true because the United States and Canada have vast areas in which nobody lives. About 1/3 of the U.S. is federal land managed by the Bureau of Land Management; that really throws off the average. If I recall correctly, around 40% of the population of Canada lives along a line between Windsor and Montréal. Meanwhile, this is Spain compared to the Northeast:

              image

              Spain has a population just under 50 million. It also has a high-speed rail network. You’d think that in a region with a far, far higher population density, the U.S. and Canada could do better than the Acela.

        • LwL@lemmy.worldEnglish
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          2 months ago

          Japan and afaik also china are building long distance maglev lines at the moment. We will see if there are any issues that regular hsr wouldn’t have. It’s certainly expensive to build, but high speed connection between major cities can be worth it. Technology that can go at almost 2/3 the speed of planes but is able to run entirely on electricity isn’t necessarily just some gimmick, there is an actual use case for it. 300 km/h is fast, but 500 is a lot faster. Of course just like with existing HSR, building routes that support these high speeds is a challenge (and part of why japans line under construction is so much faster than the existing shinkansen is that it just cuts straight through the mountains, which is of course expensive).

          The planned line is supposedt to be even faster than flying (45m vs 1h) overall, probably due to the overhead of taxiing. And that’s without considering security.

          • CompactFlax@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
            0·
            2 months ago

            There’s only 6 globally, under 100km total track. Shinkansen trains are conventional rail. It’s been just around the corner for 100 years.

            1. Korea, 1km
            2. Shanghai, 30km
            3. Linimo, Japan, 8.9km
            4. Incheon, Korea, 6.1km
            5. Changsha, China, 18.5km
            6. beijing, China, 8.2km
        • blx@piefed.zipEnglish
          0·
          2 months ago

          China has the advantage of a dictatorship which can be decisive

          Not to worry! The USA is catching up real quick on that point

    • VAK@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      2 months ago

      Maglev makes sense in connecting only the major cities like Japan is doing

    • DrPop@lemmy.worldEnglish
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      2 months ago

      We need a rail line that is strictly for commuters. Right now the rails are owned by freight companies so they prioritize freight over people. Yes we do have the infrastructure to initiate high speed rails, but those rails are used for objects not people.

      • Cethin@lemmy.zipEnglish
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        2 months ago

        Passengers is the term you mean, not commuters. I read the first sentence and thought you were going to suggest something that is only open to people coming from and going to work.

        But yes, we need passenger rail that’s exclusively passenger rail.

    • TheJesusaurus@piefed.caEnglish
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      2 months ago

      Regular ass train gang. Let’s stop trying to reinvent something that already works way better than whatever half ass bullshit you thought about for a couple hours.

  • nexguy@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    2 months ago

    Shit is so far apart here it’s more difficult and expensive to connect the cities. It 100% should be done but instead we need to reeeealy invest in city infrastructure around data centers right now. Sowwy

  • mkwt@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    2 months ago

    The current Lake Shore Limited route is 1,543 km. Doing that in 2.5 hours requires an average speed of 617 km/hr. At TGV top speeds of 320 km/hr it is a 4.8 hour trip.

    As far as I know, 600 km/hr requires the development of additional technology not in operational use in other countries.

  • BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.todayEnglish
    0·
    2 months ago

    While we spent 20 years, and 7 trillion bucks, losing wars in the Middle East, China built a nationwide high speed rail system from scratch, and eliminated most poverty in their country.

    We just got out of one 20 year quagmire, and now Trump gets us right into another one. Lockheed, Raytheon, Boeing, etc. all LOVE it though.

    We have the money to do anything we want in this country - free health care, college/trades, pre-k, etc., but the people we elect on both sides prefer to waste it on Wars, and policies that help the ultra-wealthy, which is Wars.

  • Eddbopkins@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    2 months ago

    the air line business lobbest against this all the time. if this was a thing in the USA the air line industry would collaps.

  • Shanmugha@lemmy.worldEnglish
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    2 months ago

    Wow. Now that’s something I would very much want my tax money go to, any day at any country

  • Soleos@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    2 months ago

    The US environment, systems, and societies are not conducive to HSR. You will see widespread cheap electric flights before you see HSR. Here’s a good video explaining why: https://youtu.be/753xlF0EWsI

    Basically the land costs way more, it’s viewed as business that needs to profit, not infrastructure you spend on, and you cant bulldoze over people as cheaply to make the necessary routes.

  • NathanRanch@lemmy.zipEnglish
    0·
    2 months ago

    It would make less money doing the same amount of work, and in America we only want to generate value for the share holder.