this post was submitted on 23 Dec 2023
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When I lived in Germany for a while, my wife and I took a train across the country one winter to Munich for the Christmas markets. We stayed in a hostel and walked the streets, enjoying the various stalls. I'd never heard of Glüwein before (hot, mulled, spiced red wine), but it was fantastic! It was an amazing experience and we didn't have to worry about parking lots or figuring out public transportation. Everything was within walking distance and we ended up touring all of Munich on foot.
I wish the US would get off its ass and get some high speed trains set up. We just need to keep oil and auto dealers out of the discussion because they keep shutting it down. Like Musk's "Hyperloop" project, which he proposed to stop legislation from approving high speed trains, but then intentionally did nothing with, so we just don't develop trains to replace his Tesla cars.
High speed trains should actually not be the primary focus of the US when it commes to public transport, city/suburban systems are more important.
Don't get me wrong, the US absolutely needs high speed rail, but without a well functioning local public transport system at both ends you end up with something that conceptually is more like an airport than a european train station.
Without local public transport, travelers still need to go by car to and from the endpoints, just like a lot of airports, this means that stations will require a lot of expensive parking, that is essentially wasted space.
Now, the US will probably allways be car dependant to a higher degree than Europe, this is due to how cities have been built, unchecked urban sprawl with little mixed use zones with few central spots makes it hard to build good metro and bus lines, where do you put the stations, where will people connect?
I won't pretend to have the answers, I absolutely don't, but I know that regardless of how public transport is established in new and existing neighbourhoods there will be angry people, but lets just make sure that the happy people outnumber them
100% without local city restructuring with mixed zoning and suburban redevelopment for proper land use, high speed rail developments will result on those stupid “middle of nowhere” train stations that are just railways from giant parking lot to giant parking lot. Completely undermining the whole point of rail that is being able to drop you off right in the middle of dense cities, which airports can't due to the logistics of flight.
Sometimes to get to work I drive one mile, park (expensively) and then take the train 8 miles, then walk a mile, carrying all the shit I need for work, including my dinner, laptop, change of clothes and 3 40z water bottles. Usually I just drive.
You can say a lot about Stockholm, but one thing it does have is excellent public transport, fully integrated with the suburbs.
In my municipality we have a local train line and several bus lines that can take me into the city, during rush hour busses depart every 5-10 min or so from my closest bus stop, bus lanes along the highway work well and it usually takes me an hour to get to the office, 40 min during summer, this is to cover about 30km.
The problem here in Portland is I have between an 11 and 13 mile commute to the office downtown. 18 to 20 km.
To use the bus or light rail to and from work, figure out how long it would take to drive, then add on an extra hour in the morning and an hour and a half at night.
I might pay $20 a day to park, but I get back 2.5 hours a day in time. My time is worth far more than $8/hr.
Helsinki area is kind of like that as well. The times can get very long if you have to take a few routes while straight travel can be very fast. Coverage is pretty great.
Agree if by "local public transport" you mean "put things next to each other, without 18 400-car parking lots separating them"
To make public transport successful you need mixed use zoning, small community centers where you can connect from longer routes to more local routes, meeting places with a few shops/cafés/restaurants, parking will be needed as well, but not insane surface lots, but a garage with 2-3 levels should be fine.
Right - public transit needs to be usable in the place you're traveling to if you're going to take a train. This is why a lot of people would rather drive from, say San Francisco to Los Angeles. Suppose you were to take a train instead. Then... great?! what would you do next? You wouldn't have anywhere to go, so you'll need a car anyway. You'd either have to rent one or just skip the train and do the drive instead.
Probably a lot easier and feasible in my opinion to build the local public transit first, and then focus on the regional/national transit system.
If you're going from LA to SF you're fine. You'd take the Coast Starlight to SJ, then you'd transfer to Cal Train, and that drops you off at the Transbay Terminal in SF which gives you easy access to BART or Muni and all of the streetcar and bus lines. Owning a car in SF is more trouble than it's worth for a lot of people. I never owned one when I lived there.
Granted, SF is one of only a handful of US cities where this is true.
Heading south to LA would probably be a much bigger problem though.
I see what you're saying, but the advantage of intercity rail, not necessarily high-speed, but rail that goes from one city to another at commuter speeds, that is definitely worth having where I live. I'm in Terre Haute, IN. There isn't a ton of work here. A lot of people here make the 80-90 minute drive to either Indianapolis or Bloomington to their jobs. There is already a bus line here if people need that and, yes, it could go to more places, but Indiana used to have a robust rail network that linked the entire state and doing something like that today would have a lot of advantages. Not just the job issue, but both Indianapolis and Bloomington are desirable destinations for things like restaurants and shows and people from all over the state drive to them (and a few other small cities) very regularly because of that.
The way I see it, a lot more CO2 emissions would be reduced with intercity rail in this state and the public bus transportation in various Indiana cities is already decent.
Sorry, I think you missunderstand me, I didn't mean that the US should abandon any existing rail project, but that the local public transport system if often forgotten in the talk about HSR
I'm not talking about existing rail projects either. I'm essentially agreeing with you that HSR is a distraction, but I'm also saying that intracity rail that is not HSR can be more important than public transportation inside a city, so it depends on where you are in the U.S. on which should be focused.
Dude I’m traveling to Texas in a few months and I didn’t realize how close Dallas/Fort Worth, Houston, and Austin are. It’s like a triangle, 2.5 to 3.5 hours between either city. Waco and San Antonio sit on the line between Austin and DFW.
These cities are linked by a rather nice highway system from what I remember last time I was in TX, but to the best of my knowledge, there’s no high-speed rail, only rail that’s slower than driving most the time.
Why? Texas should be embarrassed. Especially with Houston being so close to Galveston, which is a pretty damn good port.
High speed trains for city to city transit wouldn't allow for markets like this. You need suburb to city core transit for that...
Oh, wait:
https://www.trains.com/trn/news-reviews/news-wire/portland-transit-agency-announces-plans-for-six-week-shutdown-of-major-light-rail-hub/