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> Even with the best available rail technology, trips between them would take over 12 hours by rail. New York-San Francisco (for example) in 12 hours by train

> Even with the best available rail technology, trips between them would take over 12 hours by rail. New York-San Francisco (for example) in 12 hours by train could be great: leave at 7pm, eat dinner, get a full night's sleep, wake up the next morning and you're there. The night on the train shouldn't cost more than an extra night in a hotel room would've cost, and you've gone city center to city center and avoided the nightmare of air travel. Sign me up.

tptacek 9y ago
NYC to SFO in 12 hours would be amazing. What train technology gets you that?
- phire 9y ago
  NYC to SFO in 12 hours is an average speed of 215mph, assuming the most direct route possible. Practically you would require a top speed of ~250mph, and current current generation of conventional rail trains max out at about 190-210mph. But they could easily do NYC to SFO in 13-14 hours. The Shanghai Maglev Train reaches a top speed of 268mph (during it's short 7min trip to the airport), so it could do the trip in less than 12 hours. But I'm not sure it's theoretically practical over distances that long.
  - vacri 9y ago
    That's a hell of a lot of infrastructure just to link two end-points at opposite ends of the continent. Any train going that route is not going to be an express, and more stops significantly affect average speed.
    - bennettfeely 9y ago
      Getting downvoted for bringing up completely reasonable points? And who is gonna pay for this magical high speed railroad that never breaks down and is never delayed? High speed rail in California is costing around $90 million per mile. A perfectly straight line from NYC-SF is 2,572 miles. That's nearly a quarter of a trillion dollars. All to allow costal elites to increase their travel time? Sure.
  - DrScump 9y ago
    NYC to SFO in 12 hours is an average speed of 215mph With zero stops and no delays.
- andrepd 9y ago
  It's ~ 350km/h, can be done with TGV-like speeds.
  - tptacek 9y ago
    That's a max speed, not an average. And again, for this fantastical train, we're earning the privilege of doing in 12 hours what a plane will do in 6.
    - jonathansizz 9y ago
      Does that six hours include travel to the airport, check-in, security clearance, boarding, deplaning, baggage collection, and travel from the destination airport back into the city? If you factor in all this extra stuff, it looks more like 9-10 hours.
      - ams6110 9y ago
        You have most of that with a train too, other than the security clearance (for now). But assuming high-speed train travel became something more than the sideshow operation that is Amtrak today, security screening of passengers would very likely be implemented.
        lorenzhs 9y ago
        No you don't. As someone who lives in a country with functioning high speed rail and who uses it regularly, let me tell you how it works here: You go to the train station, which is in the city centre. You use a subway, tram or bicycle to get there. You walk in, go to your platform and enter the train. You place your luggage in the luggage rack and take your seat. When the train arrives at your destination or interchange point, you grab your stuff and leave. Sometime in between, staff will walk the train and check your ticket. No long transit to/from the station. No check-in, no security screening, no baggage drop-off/pickup. It's a train, not rocket science.
        deleted 9y ago
- meddlepal 9y ago
  It's called an airplane and it gets you there in six.
  - enraged_camel 9y ago
    If you take into account ticketing and check in and security and boarding, the actual number is more like 9 or 10 hours. Add to this the commute to and from the airports and you are looking at 12 hours.
  - Larrikin 9y ago
    But then you have to get on an airplane and all the horror that brings with it.
- cmyr 9y ago
  doing some napkin math (and assuming you can lay track with a run length about equal to doing this by car) you'd need a train averaging 250mph. Current top average speeds for wheeled trains (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TGV https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TGV) are in the 170mph range.
- jonathansizz 9y ago
  It doesn't exist now. That doesn't mean it couldn't be built; the article was lamenting America's loss of vision and technological leadership, and I was replying to your comment that implied that 12 hours between major cities would be too slow, which in the case of coast-to-coast I disagree with.
majormajor 9y ago
So you're spending a bunch of money to build a route - and how many stops do you have in between dragging down that average speed? - that does half of what you can do in air, at probably not a ton more comfort level at twice+ the length (I've not seen a lot of inexpensive long train trips in the US or Asia that beat domestic coach (let alone domestic first) by enough for me to want to put up with it for two or more times the amount of time), and at the end of the day you haven't solved SEA-NYC, LAX-NYC, etc, which are all already served in the status quo. As a historical timing thing, most of the US leapfrogged the need for urban density and big train networks with air travel and automobiles, and neither of them are expensive enough relative to national wealth now to make it easy to justify investing more in alternatives currently. Especially with self-driving electric cars and alternative energy sources potentially around the corner to plow through the biggest pain points we've encountered around our car-centric urban design so far.
- timr 9y ago
  "how many stops do you have in between dragging down that average speed?" It's amazing that other countries haven't solved this problem by inventing things like express trains. Oh wait, they have. It's the literally same technology as a skip list. "that does half of what you can do in air, at probably not a ton more comfort level at twice+ the length (I've not seen a lot of inexpensive long train trips in the US or Asia that beat domestic coach (let alone domestic first) by enough for me to want to put up with it for two or more times the amount of time), and at the end of the day you haven't solved SEA-NYC, LAX-NYC, etc, which are all already served in the status quo." And yet, most people aren't traveling cost-to-coast. We don't need to solve SEA-NYC with trains. Solving SEA-LAX or NYC-ATL would be more than good enough. Otherwise, your comment is completely counterfactual. I just spent a year in Japan. Trains there are cost-competitive with air travel, far better in terms of time and convenience, and vastly more comfortable. The only train segments that are "twice the length" of driving or flying are the segments that don't exist (i.e. you have to take a circuitous route, because the direct line isn't there). No rational person in Japan prefers to fly or drive if they can take a train. Even the local lines are preferable for trips under 4-5 hours. And Japan is the size of the US west coast, with similar population distribution (a few big cities, with lots of smaller, rural towns between). There's no reason we can't have the same systems in America. We just don't, because we don't invest, and Americans insist on arguing about things they don't understand, based on little more than opinion and ideology.
krschultz 9y ago
I've seen flights from NY->SFO for less than the cost of a night in a Silicon Valley hotel. I don't think it's optimal though.

tptacek 9y ago

NYC to SFO in 12 hours would be amazing. What train technology gets you that?

phire 9y ago
NYC to SFO in 12 hours is an average speed of 215mph, assuming the most direct route possible. Practically you would require a top speed of ~250mph, and current current generation of conventional rail trains max out at about 190-210mph. But they could easily do NYC to SFO in 13-14 hours. The Shanghai Maglev Train reaches a top speed of 268mph (during it's short 7min trip to the airport), so it could do the trip in less than 12 hours. But I'm not sure it's theoretically practical over distances that long.
- vacri 9y ago
  That's a hell of a lot of infrastructure just to link two end-points at opposite ends of the continent. Any train going that route is not going to be an express, and more stops significantly affect average speed.
  - bennettfeely 9y ago
    Getting downvoted for bringing up completely reasonable points? And who is gonna pay for this magical high speed railroad that never breaks down and is never delayed? High speed rail in California is costing around $90 million per mile. A perfectly straight line from NYC-SF is 2,572 miles. That's nearly a quarter of a trillion dollars. All to allow costal elites to increase their travel time? Sure.
- DrScump 9y ago
  NYC to SFO in 12 hours is an average speed of 215mph With zero stops and no delays.
andrepd 9y ago
It's ~ 350km/h, can be done with TGV-like speeds.
- tptacek 9y ago
  That's a max speed, not an average. And again, for this fantastical train, we're earning the privilege of doing in 12 hours what a plane will do in 6.
  - jonathansizz 9y ago
    Does that six hours include travel to the airport, check-in, security clearance, boarding, deplaning, baggage collection, and travel from the destination airport back into the city? If you factor in all this extra stuff, it looks more like 9-10 hours.
    - ams6110 9y ago
      You have most of that with a train too, other than the security clearance (for now). But assuming high-speed train travel became something more than the sideshow operation that is Amtrak today, security screening of passengers would very likely be implemented.
      - lorenzhs 9y ago
        No you don't. As someone who lives in a country with functioning high speed rail and who uses it regularly, let me tell you how it works here: You go to the train station, which is in the city centre. You use a subway, tram or bicycle to get there. You walk in, go to your platform and enter the train. You place your luggage in the luggage rack and take your seat. When the train arrives at your destination or interchange point, you grab your stuff and leave. Sometime in between, staff will walk the train and check your ticket. No long transit to/from the station. No check-in, no security screening, no baggage drop-off/pickup. It's a train, not rocket science.
        deleted 9y ago
meddlepal 9y ago
It's called an airplane and it gets you there in six.
- enraged_camel 9y ago
  If you take into account ticketing and check in and security and boarding, the actual number is more like 9 or 10 hours. Add to this the commute to and from the airports and you are looking at 12 hours.
- Larrikin 9y ago
  But then you have to get on an airplane and all the horror that brings with it.
cmyr 9y ago
doing some napkin math (and assuming you can lay track with a run length about equal to doing this by car) you'd need a train averaging 250mph. Current top average speeds for wheeled trains (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TGV https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TGV) are in the 170mph range.
jonathansizz 9y ago
It doesn't exist now. That doesn't mean it couldn't be built; the article was lamenting America's loss of vision and technological leadership, and I was replying to your comment that implied that 12 hours between major cities would be too slow, which in the case of coast-to-coast I disagree with.

majormajor 9y ago

So you're spending a bunch of money to build a route - and how many stops do you have in between dragging down that average speed? - that does half of what you can do in air, at probably not a ton more comfort level at twice+ the length (I've not seen a lot of inexpensive long train trips in the US or Asia that beat domestic coach (let alone domestic first) by enough for me to want to put up with it for two or more times the amount of time), and at the end of the day you haven't solved SEA-NYC, LAX-NYC, etc, which are all already served in the status quo. As a historical timing thing, most of the US leapfrogged the need for urban density and big train networks with air travel and automobiles, and neither of them are expensive enough relative to national wealth now to make it easy to justify investing more in alternatives currently. Especially with self-driving electric cars and alternative energy sources potentially around the corner to plow through the biggest pain points we've encountered around our car-centric urban design so far.

timr 9y ago
"how many stops do you have in between dragging down that average speed?" It's amazing that other countries haven't solved this problem by inventing things like express trains. Oh wait, they have. It's the literally same technology as a skip list. "that does half of what you can do in air, at probably not a ton more comfort level at twice+ the length (I've not seen a lot of inexpensive long train trips in the US or Asia that beat domestic coach (let alone domestic first) by enough for me to want to put up with it for two or more times the amount of time), and at the end of the day you haven't solved SEA-NYC, LAX-NYC, etc, which are all already served in the status quo." And yet, most people aren't traveling cost-to-coast. We don't need to solve SEA-NYC with trains. Solving SEA-LAX or NYC-ATL would be more than good enough. Otherwise, your comment is completely counterfactual. I just spent a year in Japan. Trains there are cost-competitive with air travel, far better in terms of time and convenience, and vastly more comfortable. The only train segments that are "twice the length" of driving or flying are the segments that don't exist (i.e. you have to take a circuitous route, because the direct line isn't there). No rational person in Japan prefers to fly or drive if they can take a train. Even the local lines are preferable for trips under 4-5 hours. And Japan is the size of the US west coast, with similar population distribution (a few big cities, with lots of smaller, rural towns between). There's no reason we can't have the same systems in America. We just don't, because we don't invest, and Americans insist on arguing about things they don't understand, based on little more than opinion and ideology.

krschultz 9y ago

I've seen flights from NY->SFO for less than the cost of a night in a Silicon Valley hotel. I don't think it's optimal though.