Anything but trains.
There is no amount of traffic that would make me consider getting in a robot-controlled 140 mph bus lmao.
The American mind is just incapable of comprehending trains
We can comprehend just fine. There’s a project, California High Speed Rail, under construction to connect these two cities. The trouble is that our political and economic systems have become so sclerotic that China has built an entire HSR network since work on this line began, and it won’t even be done before 2031.
We can still build highways, because the political and regulatory mechanisms to create them were fine-tuned as the system crystalized into inflexibility.
Frankly, this exact inability of U.S. society to change and adapt to new conditions was the signal indicator of the incipient collapse, for me.
It’s funny because 80% of comments about general “Americans” are also falling for the propaganda
If you wanted to build a track for these “high speed buses” it would require special safety features, signalling, barriers etc. that make it look much more like a train track than like a motorway. So you’d gain exactly nothing over building a train track.
Well, yes, exactly. A nation cannot remain an economic superpower by frittering away its wealth on expensive, but suboptimal shit like a “highway” for high-speed buses. If it’s no longer able able to build effective, cheap infrastructure because it doesn’t benefit an entrenched industry, then collapse isn’t far off.
Not true. Not even close. According to the article, the bus lanes would be built on existing infrastructure. The bridges exist, the right-of-way exists, there would be comparatively little political resistance, the cost would be MUCH lower. Also, maintenance costs would be much lower.
But those aren’t going to do 180 km/h. No existing bus will achieve this kind of speed on a regular motorway. This is all just a bunch of hot air.
I agree this this is never going to happen, but 110mph isn’t that fast.
Dedicated buslanes are great, but they can cause lumpy tarmac if you run a high frequency, high maintenance costs that could detract from other highway repairs…
Maybe add some long rows of steel reinforcement into the buslane (just to reduce maintenance costs of course), a protective barrier / embankment to stop cars encroaching.
Use E-busses of course, but maybe overhead wires, purely to reduce weight and fire risk.
/jk
I know in reality the curves and grades on a highway are too tight and steep, so you need a new easement.
There’s a project, California High Speed Rail, under construction to connect these two cities.
Proposition 1A passed in 2008, followed by the awarding of federal stimulus funds in 2010.
The California HSR was a plot point in the second season of True Detective, which began production in January of 2014.
18 years later, the Phase One between San Francisco and Anaheim is still under construction.
Have you ever looked at how much the land costs where we would put the trains?
This is more of an unrestrained capitalism thing rather than a distinctly American thing.
Trains need much, much less land per passenger than motorways.
We’ve been force-fed this line of bullshit about cars being freedom. Public transportation is for freaks and losers. I mean. GM and Standard Oil say so!
I comprehend it fine. UK life, no car, train only for going on five years. Cheaper than owning a car, even with the occasional taxi ride. Get more steps in, too.
Well, don’t get too comfortable with that. The UK is also going in the direction of Oops, All Cars as they slash rail budgets and build out enormous new highway lines.
I thought they ate the onion but somehow this appears to be an actual serious study. I can’t imagine how uncomfortable a bus going 140mph would be. At that point the engineering required to keep the road in appropriate shape is likely more expensive than just using rails…
Once again, the Onion has predicted the news before it happens…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNixDlRoMvAOh don’t worry.
recycling the classics
Obama Replaces Costly High-Speed Rail Plan With High-Speed Bus Plan
How fast do they expect these “high speed” busses to go, and still remain safe? They’d have to put them on some kind of a track…
Wow, 140MPH! That’s … still 84MPH slower than the fastest trains in Europe, and 127MPH slower than the fastest train in Asia (Shanghai maglev).
These stupid fantasies are still a pale shadow of what the rest of the world has already managed to achieve. Just finish building the fucking train already!
Shanghai maglev
Communism Killed 10 Trillion People, though.
So we have to stick with cars
[Insert image of Chinese EVs]
No, idiot. American cars only.
Not to mention that’s quite a dangerous speed for a bus
Hey, if that bus drops below 55, we got a way to deal with that.
I bet they will do a “special track” for them
Everything but rail, huh?
Why is American society so braindead?
We are a nation of idolwhorshipers. We whorship celebrities and dream of becoming soldiers and/or princesses. We are commiting a genocide with no fucks given. We like to be used and abused. Skeet skeeet into the rag and throw us on to the ground. We were raised wrong. Just put the tacobell grade D meat on the credit card. YOLO We are sluts and we hate ourselves. The men in the imperial core religious or not get our dicks cut at birth because… well just because. We are imperial slaves. We have no history but phoney optics from the past and gallons and gallons of human blood. We are losers… assigned at birth. We are fake smilers and colonial jailers. We are turds who like the smell of turds. We only know our shitbox. We are creatures of the mostly lowly and depraved
There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that “my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”
Isaac Asimov
There are already rails between LA and SF. Why not use them?
Because it takes 8+ hours.
I was being rhetorical. There is infrastructure that can be developed here.
They’re currently building high speed rail, but it’s 14 years from opening by current estates.
Was supposed to be done by now, it’s been a shitshow, but it seems to have improved in recent years.
A lot of it is commercial rail that nobody wants to disrupt
I’ve got one! A people movie treadmill! 300mph. You catch a local taxi, it accelerated to 80mph. Then you jump on to a plane which then takes you from 80 to 300. Then you jump on the treadmill. Don’t know yet how to get you off. Bit its not disgusting.
psssst! … trains…
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh!!!
Build a train you fucken cowards
🚂🚃🚃🚃
Y’all, they’re building a high speed train, but it’s mired in problems, and if the economy crashes, it will be decades before it’s completed. This would be a medium-term solution that’s easy to build, and easy to take down when it’s no longer needed.
These “high speed buses” don’t even exist in theory. So it would just be plain old regular buses. You can have these now.
The reason for busses is simple and seems to be ignored by literally everyone.
The private property between SF and LA keeps increasing in price so the costs for the project are in the billions before anything is even built. The signing of the land is in the billions. Now build a rail in Trump’s economy and it becomes nearly impossible to succeed at anything rail.
Busses builds an audience that can be used to later justify rail to get buses off the road. Americans hate big trucks on the road but there they are anyway. It’s a slow burn turn to morph the car brain into train brain.
Ahaha nonono. The problem is that the land is owned by white people. If it were owned by black people, then it would already have been bulldozed.
The private property between SF and LA keeps increasing in price so the costs for the project are in the billions before anything is even built.
Damn, if only eminent domain existed
Even with eminent domain though you still have to pay market value. Edit: Not that they shouldn’t do it. It would still be worth it in the long run
Governments can have a funny way of determining market value based on whether they like you or not.
Just point to a row of buildings and declare “slum clearance”. Suddenly, you can get them for a steal.
Weird how cities used eminent domain to bulldoze entire black and Hispanic neighborhoods to build highways yet can’t use eminent domain to get some rich assholes overpriced real estate for this.
The city would lose the legal battle due to The Rich’s lawyers.
They’d never attempt the battle due to The Rich’s Legislators and Governor
Same reason we can’t have it in the UK. We won’t just pass a bill to CPO the land off (or take something else off) all the tory cunts at a nominal /cost price instead of market price.
Or even if we do we’ll elect tories back in before it can be built, and give them the land back, probably for less than they were already compensated.
I think almost all of our railway routes were set out in 1800s when parliament and financiers went nuts for trains. We’re just lucky enough that some low speed rail survived the 50s-90s when they tried to wipe them out totally. Even the carpilled couldn’t fly that hard in the face of facts.
