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Las Vegas approves 68 miles of underground transportation tunnels (www.reviewjournal.com)

submitted 2 years ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 40 points 2 years ago (2 children)

America desperately tries any transport solution except trains challenge world speedrun attempt any%.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I was just on vacation in a country with a truly excellent rail system, and the moment I came back and subjected myself to the mass transit in my home city, I got kinda sad :(

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago

Yeah, we've hosted a lot of exchange students from Europe and Japan and the car dependency to do anything is consistently the biggest culture shock. Even the Russian kid was like "Dude, wtf", though in all fairness, he was from St. Petersburg.

[–] duckington 5 points 2 years ago (1 children)

The thing that hurts is it really would not be that hard to build… but they just don’t. Do it.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago (2 children)

The primary issue is that American government, at all levels, is pathologically incapable of doing anything whose ROI interval is longer than about a year.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

Except interstates, then it's "what's an ROI?"

[–] duckington 1 points 2 years ago

Painfully true… after all, line must go up

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Just one more lane, we're gonna fix traffic, just one more lane. It's different this time, it'll be underground.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

I swear bro, please, bro, c'mon, just one more lane

[+] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

[deleted]

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

There is an attempt to build HSR to Las Vegas and Musk isn't involved. However, it is being built by a private company when the project really should have been integrated with California's HSR project.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

It's not even properly HSR. IIRC Brightline operates in the realm of high(er) speed rail, which is, like 150 mph or something. Faster than conventional Amtrak (a lot of Amtrak's trains and routes technically can get up to 90-110 mph, but rarely achieve or maintain those speeds because they're sharing the right of way with much slower freight rail), but slower than true HSR. Brightline owning their right of way is a much bigger deal than the fact that they can go 40mph faster than conventional Amtrak's theoretical top speed. All of Amtrak's trains could jam hard if they owned their own track. Take the coast starlight from LA to Seattle, for example. It's currently a 36 hour trip, but if they could actually maintain 100mph, the trip would be closer to 11 hours (1135 mi/ 100 mph, miles cancel our, leaving 11 and change hours). I know they'd still have to stop at the stations and slow through towns, but my point still stands. An 11 or 13 hour train trip from LA to Seattle would be a lot more reasonable than 36 hours. As it stands, going anywhere by Amtrak is basically the same speed or a little slower than travelling by car, which is, frankly, fucking ridiculous.