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tweet by amtrak ben: i think we should build high speed rail next to freeways only because it would make drivers feel like complete losers all the time
edit: fixed alt text
tweet by amtrak ben: i think we should build high speed rail next to freeways only because it would make drivers feel like complete losers all the time
edit: fixed alt text
They did this where I am from, but the high speed trains cost way too much yo be worth it and they never travel at their full speed and are about the same speed as a car.
You also HAVE to drive to the train station. And by the time you wait for the train and pay for parking, you might as well just drive into the city.
In fact, it hardly saves time or money and often ends up being about the same cost and time.
Also the last train leaves the city shortly after the work day ends. So if you work late or get held up, then you are not going home or paying a crap ton for a Uber home.
It’s just fucked and I hate that it is that way.
This chaotic scenario is exactly why we need to focus on public transport. If it sucks, we need to improve.
The first computers sucked. Should we have given up because they were massive, expensive, totally niche, and required specialized knowledge to even turn on? Very impractical, but we improved. The same can go for transport. Look at the goal and work towards it.
Don’t look at the ingredients and give up because they aren’t already a pie.
“High speed rail” means intercity rail (think airplane or Greyhound bus replacement), not commuter rail or metro rail. That makes sense to put along a freeway because there’s generally only one direct freeway connection between each pair of major metro areas.
I agree that it doesn’t make sense to put commuter rail or metro rail adjacent to a freeway. Ideally, it would be the opposite: the routes radiating from the city should have the freeways and rail lines spread as far apart from each other as possible, so that commuters in different areas have good access to either one mode or the other, rather than some having good access to both and others neither.
Why? Too much risk someone will be close to the tracks?
If following Hanlon’s razor, that entire situation sounds like someone proposed “we need trains going into the city”, set it up, and called it a day.
The train I usually take saves maybe only like 15 minutes (normally about an hour to drive), but at least you can do more stuff on the train rather than sitting at the wheel.
I would imagine the curvature of a highway is too tight a turn for a HSR to make safely, if “building rails along highways” was taken literally. I could be wrong though
it should still be enough to travel faster than cars though, like 140 is pretty normal for trains whereas for cars that’s about the maximum they should ever go no matter what
Number of reasons, risk of trespassing at a large number of crossings is only one of them:
Electro-mechanical? Lucky you, most of tram networks here have only mechanical, where old lady should switch direction with a crowbar.
If it is the same time and cost, you still save on time where you don’t need to focus on the street or even worse. You can read something, prepare other stuff or just do nothing and relax.