China Debuts Train Prototype That Can Hit Speeds of 385 Miles Per Hour (cnn.com) 172
China has revealed a prototype for a new high-speed Maglev train that is capable of reaching speeds of 385 miles (620 kilometers) per hour. CNN reports: The train runs on high-temperature superconducting (HTS) power that makes it look as if the train is floating along the magnetized tracks. The sleek 21-meter-long (69 feet) prototype was unveiled to media in the city of Chengdu, Sichuan Province, on January 13. In addition, university researchers constructed 165 meters (541 feet) of track to demonstrate how the train would look and feel in transit, according to state-run Xinhua News.
Professor He Chuan (vice president of Southwest Jiaotong University, which worked on the prototype) told reporters that the train could be "operational" within 3-10 years. He added: "Sichuan has rich rare earth resources, which is very beneficial to our construction of permanent magnet tracks, thus promoting the faster development of experiments."
Professor He Chuan (vice president of Southwest Jiaotong University, which worked on the prototype) told reporters that the train could be "operational" within 3-10 years. He added: "Sichuan has rich rare earth resources, which is very beneficial to our construction of permanent magnet tracks, thus promoting the faster development of experiments."
Yes but does it have a toilet? (Score:2)
The train I was on had a hole in the floor and marked out spots for your feet and handles on each wall.
I'm a pretty open minded traveler but that took me a few moments to realize what I was supposed to do when I expected to find a urinal.
Re:Yes but does it have a toilet? (Score:4, Funny)
Meanwhile in the First World they sell you a porcelain throne then a "poop stool" accessory when you find out the throne doesn't work very well.
That's capitalism, I guess.
https://www.google.com/search?... [google.com]
Re: Yes but does it have a toilet? (Score:3)
These stools are hilarious. I just put my feet on the throne.
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When thrones were first introduced in the west they had to put rollers on the seats to make them difficult to stand on - train the monkeys^Wconsumers^Wcitizens how to sit down properly.
Re: Yes but does it have a toilet? (Score:3)
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Meanwhile in the First World they sell you a porcelain throne then a "poop stool" accessory when you find out the throne doesn't work very well.
That's capitalism, I guess.
https://www.google.com/search?... [google.com]
I've never seen one of those in real life. I'd much rather be sitting on the loo than squatting when the train is moving.
Re:Yes but does it have a toilet? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm in the First World and the last time I had a train, it averaged about 25 mph and didn't have a stool or a toilet. Then I moved 8 miles out from the city center and now I don't have a train at all.
I can get to a Greyhound station after an hour or two on local busses, where I can probably get a 60mph toilet to the next regional metropolis. I suppose it's more luxurious than a covered wagon, which is where many base their comparisons. But considering I live within the city limits of a top-5 United States metropolis... I expect better, somehow. I expected to be a flagship, poster-child, vanguard of modernity. If what they told me meant anything.
I was born to parents who fled to the US to escape the postwar economic downturn in Europe. They grew up without electricity or running water. History-Channel, Ellis-Island "give us your poor huddled masses" B&W footage type shit. They lived it, and I have the stories firsthand. 50 to 70 years ago, they were dreaming of a better life for their children coming to the US. Now, their children are living in the U.S. and trying to plot a route back to the motherland.
Thoughts on South/Central Americans trying to cross the border? Give them a generation - or half-generation (10 years) to realize the American Dream is dead, and they'll stop crossing the border on their own. Maybe even quicker than that.
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Thoughts on South/Central Americans trying to cross the border? Give them a generation - or half-generation (10 years) to realize the American Dream is dead, and they'll stop crossing the border on their own. Maybe even quicker than that.
Even Mexicans are barely coming here any more and they live next door and have drug gangs (the result of the USA's failed policies) running around decapitating people. Pretty much all we still have coming here from south of the border is refugees fleeing immediate death and/or dismemberment... again, fleeing drug gangs whose activity is only profitable because of the policies of the USA.
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Interviews with current (that "still have" of yours) border hoppers put lie to that statement.
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Even Mexicans are barely coming here any more ... Pretty much all we still have coming here from south of the border is refugees fleeing immediate death and/or dismemberment...
The origins of who crosses (and doesn't get caught) are impossible to prove, aren't they? I mean, we now catch 2000 [pewresearch.org] trying to cross per day.
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Thoughts on South/Central Americans trying to cross the border? Give them a generation - or half-generation (10 years) to realize the American Dream is dead, and they'll stop crossing the border on their own.
It only has to be better from whence they came, no?
The people from South/Central Americans (Score:3)
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Get a car like everyone else and you're door-to-door as you please when you please.
Its one of the great things about living in the USA, you don't have to deal with public transportation.
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Door to door? If your destination is a big-box store, you still have a good walk from your parking space to the door!
If you truly want door to door, take a taxi, or ride a bike!
Socialism [taxfoundation.org] makes the USA great?
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I'm in the First World and the last time I had a train, it averaged about 25 mph and didn't have a stool or a toilet.
I think you'll find you're note actually in the First World. Shit man the poor european eastern block countries with their heads still buried in the sands of time thinking that the CCCP is about to emerge from its secret hiding to save the world from capitalism has trains with toilets in them.
I'm in the first world, and our trains not only have fully functional toilets, they have proximity sensor driven handwash basins and flush buttons so you don't need to touch anything in the process.
Re: Yes but does it have a toilet? (Score:2)
Squating is the Chinese style and once you get use to it, you generally find the flow is much better. The position matches the evolutionary characteristics of pooping better.
Before this it was a poop trough with a hose and communal shitting. Seen it once in Chongqing.
Re: Yes but does it have a toilet? (Score:3)
the lever you have pulled brakes is out of service (Score:2)
the lever you have pulled brakes is out of service please make an note of it
Re: Yes but does it have a toilet? (Score:2)
Last time I checked NYC subway, and there were no toilet there at all!
https://www.nydailynews.com/ne... [nydailynews.com]
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The NYC subway is literally a gigantic toilet (for the homeless mostly but others as well).
Re:Yes but does it have a toilet? (Score:5, Informative)
Chinese trains have both squatty potties and "western" toilets. In some configurations there's one of each in each car, but in some configurations you may have to go to a different car. The first class cars are usually cleaner, because fewer people use them. They do frequently clean them, though (you'll see the crews getting on and off at the longer stops).
While squatties are ubiquitous, western toilets are common in businesses, restaurants, train stations, airports, hotels, and even private homes. I lived in China for five years without having to defecate in a squatty ever, and no close calls.
Re:Yes but does it have a toilet? (Score:4, Informative)
"The train I was on had a hole in the floor and marked out spots for your feet and handles on each wall."
Like half of Asia (not Japan:-), it's called a squat toilet.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
This train also runs on Adobe Flash (Score:3)
Like those other chinese trains we heard about in January 2021
wink wink
Permanent magnet tracks? (Score:2)
My gut feel is that they'll demagnetize over a few months. Anyone who knows more about magnetism than me able to weigh in?
Re:Permanent magnet tracks? (Score:5, Informative)
Given that Germany has run maglev trains on a 31 km test track for 27 years (between 1984 and 2011), I'm quite sure something like that would've not gone unnoticed.
(see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org])
Re:Permanent magnet tracks? (Score:5, Informative)
When the tracks are permanent magnets, we are talking about electrodynamic suspension (EDS), and so I'll be interested to see the long term results.
Re:Permanent magnet tracks? (Score:4, Informative)
The Japanese system is electrodynamic suspension, but the permanent magnets are in the train. The track just has coils of wire which provide levitation, guidance and inductive power.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re: Permanent magnet tracks? (Score:2)
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Yes, you are right that the Transrapid worked with powered tracks and EMS, not permanent magnets.
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There are plenty of permanent magnets bouncing around inside EVs and myriad industrial machinery that have not lost their magnetisation. The massive coercivity of rare earth magnets makes them pretty resilient to losing their magnetisation.
I think the main issue would be cost. The alternative is something like the Chuo Shinkansen, and that uses a very smart arrangement of figure eight copper coils in the track to provide a sort of self-stabilising levitation effect along with propulsion. I can't imagine PMs
Re: Permanent magnet tracks? (Score:2)
Model 3's haven't yet stood the test of time, but they'll probably be ok. For trains we are talking about 30 tonnes completely suspended, moving at high speed. The forces involved are orders of magnitude higher than what EVs have to handle.
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The permanent magnets in the alternator in my last car lasted longer than that (and longer than the car).
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Not quite. Yes EV motors use very strong rare earth magnets as most of them are brushless DC motors. But most house-hold motors do not use magnets at all. Many utility motors are brushed universal motors with no magnets, and any HVAC blowers or fans use induction motors. There are no magnets whatsoever in induction motors.
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My gut feel is that they'll demagnetize over a few months. Anyone who knows more about magnetism than me able to weigh in?
That's just not really the way that permanent magnets work. At least not the ones they would use for a maglev track. It is true that some magnetic materials can be demagnetized by mechanical shock or light heating, but your typical industrial magnet is going to stay magnetic for a very long time, pretty much regardless of usage as long as they are not pushed passed certain limits, such as being heated above their Curie temperature. Consider that the permanent magnets in many electric motors see a lot more u
So, you saying (Score:2)
the Chinese prototype managed to catch up with the Japanese prototype from 20 years ago?
Okay.
solving the wrong problem (Score:3)
Eking out a few more percent improvement in speed is not going to significantly improve the customer experience. Japan had hit 375 before, so 385 is only a 2.7% improvement. Maglevs are relatively short runs, owing to the expense of track construction, so in absolute time saved, it is not much at all. The longest Maglev track in the world is 26.5 miles, so this new faster train would save 6.6 seconds running at top speed end-to-end. Also, this is dead-end research. Wind resistance is proportional to the square of speed and you hit a wall where you can not pack more power into your train to overcome the increased resistance. That's if you do not hit sane economic limits first, where the increased expense of added power is greater than the amount saved by reaching the destination a little faster.
A better problem to work on would be reducing the cost of manufacturing and deployment and maintenance. Considering the price per unit of time saved in transport, what gets more people where they are going faster? That 2.7% improvement in speed or more fast trains at a reduced cost. Or a different approach, such as Hyperloop?
Seems more like a game of one-upmanship between engineers at public expense than a conscientious attempt to reduce commuting times.
Re: solving the wrong problem (Score:3)
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Maintenance for high speed rail is quite intensive but I don't know how it compares to aircraft. Cheaper I imagine.
The Japanese system inspects trains at the end of every run (so several times a day), with more detailed inspections every few days. They also have special track inspection trains that run overnight and survey the entire network. A lot of the work is automated.
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Your imagination isn't relevant. Should have stopped at "aircraft".
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have data to back that up? I tried a search but couldn't find anything.
On a side note I did find this, showing positives for parent posts, where often true travel time of planes being faster (and lower economics costs, the second link explaining why plane fares of often cheaper than planes)
https://www.dw.com/en/trains-v... [dw.com]
https://www.independent.co.uk/... [independent.co.uk]
Re:solving the wrong problem (Score:5, Informative)
Right now Japan is building a 286km long maglev [wikipedia.org] to link its largest cities. There is currently a HSR route between them which takes 100 minutes and is over capacity, so they are adding a maglev route which will take just 40 minutes. Despite the fact that the maglev route needs to be 90% tunneled due to the large mountains in the way (massively increasing the cost), the maglev is projected to be economically viable. So no maglev is not a dead end.
China is in about the same situation as Japan - existing HSR lines which are very well used and also slower than optimal (Beijing-Shanghai is about 5 hours by HSR), and extreme difficulty in adding additional air capacity. So maglev makes sense there too.
No China's 385mi/hr maglev is not much better than Japan's 375mi/hr maglev, but it has the advantage (for China) of being China's. More competition brings down prices and also allows independence from potentially hostile foreign suppliers.
You're right this is not a "conscientious attempt to reduce commuting times". It's not an attempt to reduce commuting times at all. It's an attempt to reduce times for long distance travel.
Re:solving the wrong problem (Score:5, Informative)
It's worth saying that Japan's new maglev is going to start at around 600km/hr, but is expected to get faster over time. They are very conservative with speed - the current conventional trains are rated for high speeds than they use in operation due to noise concerns and a desire to gain operational experience before getting close to engineering limits.
The Japanese system is expected to be profitable over the long term, over decades. It's also in demand, several cities wanted the route to pass by them do they could have stations. I've seen the prototype running and it's incredible, the speed kind of short-circuits your brain because there's just no other similar experience to seeing something so massive moving so fast so close to you.
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There's a train in Ca that demonstrates this ("sane economic limits") is an unfortunate delusion. Amtrack too, for that matter.
Too fast (Score:2)
Unless the track is completely segregated from any possible contamination including windblow debris then hitting something at 385mph could be potentially catastrophic. Sure , derailing a maglev is much much harder than a standard train but going that speed amplifies the possibility considerably.
Also from a purely psychological POV, I wonder how many people would feel comfortable at 385 on the ground anyway? I've been on eurostar a number of times which reaches 186mph/300kmh and even at that speed I get a bi
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Also from a purely psychological POV, I wonder how many people would feel comfortable at 385 on the ground anyway?
They may pay extra for a window seat.
Have you ever taken a bullet train in Japan or China? The fast-changing views are a joy to watch.
Bu bu hyperloop (Score:5, Interesting)
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wow americans are so gracious, praising the invisible bullshit hyperloop , but criticizing this real chinese train
lololol
It's exactly like hyperloop in that it's not real, it's a prototype. They only have 165 meters of track, so they can only have demonstrated it moving at very low speeds. TFA says "the train could be "operational" within 3-10 years."
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Nice attempt to turn this into ethocentrism. One problem: Who is praising it, that's not an official-if-not-actually-compensated-ass-kisser?
Serious question.
Every single coverage of hyperloop that allows comments that I've seen IMMEDIATELY results in quite well-informed people (engineers, etc) commenting on the ridiculousness, absurdity, if not outright terrifying DANGER posed by a 1+ ton projectile full of an organic slosh of former-people shooting at 1000+ mph through a fragile tube built on some of the
It's a prototype, not an actual WORKING train (Score:5, Insightful)
China has revealed a prototype for a new high-speed Maglev train ...
... university researchers constructed 165 meters (541 feet) of track ...
Upon which they placed a 21-meter-long (69 feet) prototype which has never moved very fast, though it might have gotten close to a 100kph on the back of a transport truck.
China still needs to build several hundreds of kilometers of rail for this train before they can actually say how fast it can go. Right now it's all the performance data from simulations and drafting table calculations.
Cool tech but I've heard of a lot of maglev train projects that never got anywhere so I look forward to seeing if China can actually pull this off.
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China does have operating maglevs. The Shanghai Airport one is the fastest train in the world.
They were considering maglev for their national high speed rail network, but in the end went with conventional rail. Then they build more high speed rail than the rest of the world has combined in about a decade.
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The Shanghai maglev was built by Germany I believe. The other high speed rail in China was eventually built by Chinese engineers, and I would agree it is quite nice, same quality as Japan and with better service. I have no doubt they have the expertise to extend this to maglev but this would be something new for them. As with most superconducting tech the Shanghai train was never profitable the last I heard.
Never satisfied ... (Score:4, Funny)
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That's the problem with Chinese trains. You have one and you want another in 385 miles ... :-)
...said Godzilla.
Well that is fast! (Score:2)
is capable of reaching speeds of 385 miles (620 kilometers) per hour.
Aka 384.9 x faster than an escalator.
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It is hard enough to step off the escalator. Imagine hopping off the train, even if it slows down for you at the station.
Permanent magnet tracks (Score:2)
I'd hate to be the one who has to clean all the bits of metal off the tracks.
Especially around platforms where people accidentally drop things.
Still not tested (Score:2)
This prototype hasn't even been tested yet, while Japan has set the record back in 2015 with a test run reaching 603 km/h (375 mph) -
https://edition.cnn.com/2015/0... [cnn.com]
The first long-distance intercity maglev railway is already being built between Tokyo to Nagoya, and likely on to Osaka.
Wow (Score:2)
Its acceleration must be impressive if they could demonstrate 600km/h on a 165 meter length track. Sounds legit
China needs to thank Germany (Score:2)
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When is the 200 years anniversary for this one?
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The "Stockton and Darlington" Railway bi-centenary will be in 2025.
Re:Who actually needs a faster train? (Score:5, Interesting)
Where do you get that nonsense assertion? High speed rail is easily protected from incursions by putting up a simple fence. The actual limit [mappingignorance.org] to rail speed is about 600km/h due to vibration and resonance effects, though in practice, only 400km/h or lower is economically viable due to much higher energy consumption at high speeds. (That is for regular trains, maglev can go faster, maglev in a vacuum tube can go even faster.)
And why do people need faster trains? Because only faster trains can compete with flight on longer-distance routes. Airspace and runway space are in short supply, and trains (if fast enough) can absorb the travel demand that would otherwise need to be met by flights. Not to mention the environmental effects of air travel which are mostly absent from electric trains.
Re:Who actually needs a faster train? (Score:5, Insightful)
High speed rail is so much nicer than domestic flying. It goes from city centre to city centre, there is no security theatre and it's cheap. Overall travel time is usually lower due to all that.
Re:Who actually needs a faster train? (Score:5, Interesting)
In Europe, I think you need to be in the airport 2+ hours before the departure of international flights. With a European high-speed train (300 km/h for ICE in Germany, 320 km/h for TGV in France), you're basically all the way across Germany (east to west) or two thirds of France, border to border. Countries as Belgium, Netherlands and countless others could be traversed (if high speed trains existed) border to border in less than an hour.
Also, in trains you could walk around, sightsee, have plenty of space (seats are so much nicer than on airplanes), it's usually quieter than on airplanes, the air is not so dry, no issues with baggage allowance (size or weight), no waiting for your baggage to be unloaded and processed, you disembark into the train station not into a bus...
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there is no security theatre and it's cheap
The fact you think there's no security theater shows you don't use highspeed rail much. Hell even on the "not really classified as high speed" Thalys you still go through a metal detector and get your luggage scanned. But you're allowed to bring bottled water in so that's a plus.
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My experience is in Japan where it's pretty much just a normal station, last time they didn't have any metal detectors.
In China they have metal detectors and x-ray machines just for the subway in Shanghai. I don't recall metal detectors or x-ray machines on the high speed rail though, maybe I forgot... I only remember them checking tickets.
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In China they have metal detectors and x-ray machines just for the subway in Shanghai. I don't recall metal detectors or x-ray machines on the high speed rail though, maybe I forgot... I only remember them checking tickets.
They have metal detectors on the Eurostar for some reason. I arrived early once so I started chatting, and I asked what they were looking for. Answer: "you know knives and things". I then asked "what would someone do with a knife on a train" and the guy nodded and said something like "du
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Seems odd when you can take an entire car on the Eurostar. I haven't been on it, are car users not allowed to mix with other passengers or something?
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Ah, you are right, thanks. I would love to know the official reason for the metal detectors though. Must be some tortured logic.
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A bomb on a train [wikipedia.org] could be quite catastrophic. Also,firearms on trains [wikipedia.org] can be problematic.
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A bomb on a train [wikipedia.org] could be quite catastrophic. Also,firearms on trains [wikipedia.org] can be problematic.
Yes, but a bomb on the trestle underneath the train would be just as devastating, and would be approximately impossible to detect beforehand. Or heck, even just removing the right rail bolts in a curve could cause a train to derail, killing large numbers of people. You can't realistically secure tens of thousands of miles of track.
Similarly, mowing down the security line with firearms would be just as deadly as using the firearms onboard the train itself; it's not like you can't stop a train to let people
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It's highly dependent on location. The point is security theater is a policy and nothing to do with a transport technology.
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It depends on the route, I guess. I took a high speed train in Italy once and there was no security. Just a momentary check at the platform entrance to make sure you have a ticket. I could have arrived at the station 2 minutes before departure and made my train.
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The fact you think there's no security theater shows you don't use highspeed rail much. Hell even on the "not really classified as high speed" Thalys you still go through a metal detector and get your luggage scanned. But you're allowed to bring bottled water in so that's a plus.
Depends on location.
However HSR is never cheap, which is what the OP is missing.
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Indeed it does. However for many routes over a certain distance the cost of HSR is easily made up for the reduction in loss time to business travellers. Back when I did it regularly I would pick the Eurostar in a heartbeat over flying to London. By the time you subtract the trip to the airports and the mandatory early arrival time you're well and truly in London faster with the Eurostar. An even higher speed service on a business traveller route would allow this to become cost effective for even larger grou
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Yep!
No need to go out to the airport, no check-in, much more comfortable (some leg room and space to move around!), a table to do stuff on, a restaurant, it's all good.
And, as you note, it can actually be faster because you go direct to the city center and avoid all that airport crap.
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Also no limits on luggage (within reason) and much better accessibility.
Did I mention how smooth they are? On the Japanese trains more than once I've looked down to get something out of my bag and when I looked up again the station is moving past the window.
Re:Who actually needs a faster train? (Score:5, Informative)
It is much nicer than flying cattle class, but in my five years of using trains in China, I've rarelty gone from city center to city center. Maybe Nanjing's main train station came close, but the good, modern, connected one in Jiangning district of Nanjing wasn't anywhere close to the city center. The "good" one in Shanghai (Hongqiao) wasn't either, although it was possible to arrive at one closer to the city center. Beijing was way the hell out of the way. Maybe when you start to get to the smaller cities things improve. Chongqing to Chengdu gets you reasonably close to the city center at both points. But smaller cities Hangzhou and Suzhou get you pretty far from their city centers.
I'm not complaining, just pointing out the false perception that once you arrive at a station, you're downtown and can walk to your hotel in the financial district or business district or manufacturing district or tourist district. In most cases, you're only in the train district, and have to go somewhere else via another conveyance, just as you do from the airport.
Re:Who actually needs a faster train? (Score:4, Insightful)
Well "city centre" for a place the size of Shanghai or Guangdong is a pretty large area... But yeah, I take your point. We had to take a taxi from the station to the centre and back in Shenzhen. At least it was an electric taxi.
The Japanese system is much better in that respect, trains run into major central stations.
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Where do you get that nonsense assertion? High speed rail is easily protected from incursions by putting up a simple fence.
Well, maybe. Depends on how determined the attacker is.
Not to mention the environmental effects of air travel which are mostly absent from electric trains.
Shoving a train through thick ground-level air at 250mph has its issues from an environmental PoV. Just because electricity is being generated from windmills and sunlight doesn't mean it's free of costs.
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Worse than multiple planes going 650mph through the air burning hundreds of gallons of oil? Costs are all relative.
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and trains are not?
rail is one of the most cost effective forms of transport.
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And also the most restrictive, a train can't do shit off the rails, meaning you need to plan things far beyond a landing strip which is the bare minimum for a plane.
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And why do people need faster trains? Because only faster trains can compete with flight on longer-distance routes.
I don't think it's just speed. Those air routes are usually cheaper than a similar train route.
Re:Who actually needs a faster train? (Score:4, Insightful)
Those air routes are usually cheaper than a similar train route.
Yes, because you're jammed into an airborne cattle truck after being herded around and groped for an hour at the airport and not allowed any baggage.
Trains are so much more pleasant than air travel.
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after being herded around and groped for an hour at the airport and not allowed any baggage.
Sounds like airports in Europe are much worse than airports in America.
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It depends where you live. In Spain, the high speed from Madrid to Alicante was far cheaper than a plane and less annoying. The problem with North America in general is that too few people take the medium to long routes and so it ends up being more expensive.
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A lot of routes in Europe are cheaper by air than by train. Same with Japan.
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There are broadly 4 modes of transportation:
Water, via ship or barge - by and large the slowest, and yet 80% of freight globally travels by sea. Why? Because it's the most economical by far; orders of magnitude cheaper than any other form of transportation. Main limit is you can't ship to w
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You, sir or ma'am, are the reason SlashDot is useful for more than bloviating. Someone who **actually** knows what they're talking about on a topic.
Again, thank you.
Re:Who actually needs a faster train? (Score:5, Insightful)
The only reason high-speed rail has been successful in other countries not the US...
Lol, completely wrong. Have you never visited the U.S.? Because you don't seem to know a lot about it.
Reasons high speed rail doesn't work in the US:
1) Incredibly strong legal rights of railroads, including non-compete clauses and legal monopolies. This goes back more than a century to the robber-barons who bought laws to most advantage them. They won't invest in high-speed rail because it would take a lot of up-front capital and there's risk involved. They also are able to dictate which trains run when on their rail lines. If they decided the passenger train waits, it waits. Freight is a hundred billion dollar industry right now. It would take a lot for passengers to be worth prioritizing. We'd need to undo more than a century's worth of laws to break their hold on the lines, in order to move to high-speed rail.
2) A strong U.S. car culture, with society now designed around heavy automobile use. The Federal Highway Act funded millions of miles of roadway, at the same time domestic automobile production was ramping up and making a prosperous middle class. Culturally we adopted autos as symbols of freedom and prosperity. Cars take you on vacation. Cars are a status symbol. Cars get nicknames and get passed down to the kids. Most of the U.S. have irrational attachments to their cars, to the point they're willing to be massively inconvenienced by them and financially ruined by them. So many people go into debt buying cars that we have multiple shows about repossessing cars that people are behind on their debt payments for!
3) Due to the culture, trillions of dollars invested in making cars feasible. Massive gas distribution network. Parking everywhere. In most suburban to urban places, 50% of the roadway is dedicated to parking. Millions of miles of roads built, tunnels carved, bridges erected, lights placed, signals, signs, etc. If we had put half that much funding into high-speed rail, we'd have it in spades.
4) Investment into air travel and transport over rail. We're still investing billions of dollars [businesstraveller.com] into our airports every year. We're not investing that into high-speed rail. Of course high-speed rail can't compete!
5) Politics. In order to really do high-speed rail that goes inter-state, we need a structural change to how the railroads are managed. Democrats generally want to nationalize them, more like highways, which republicans oppose, and republicans want to deregulate and federally fund the private rail companies, which democrats tend to oppose.
The U.S. doesn't have high-speed rail because we've never invested in it. We've never invested in it because that involves a lot of legal messiness to remove some of the protections the railroad companies have, to drive investment in the tracks needed and to make sure that passengers are prioritized over freight. We don't have airports because air travel is better or cheaper, we have them because it was easier to invest there than tackle the railroad problem.
If this administration wants to do it, I'd love to see it. The railroads have had way too much power for way too many lifetimes. I live in a small city where they regularly run a train directly through it at rush hour, because they can and it's a convenient time for them. (Or because they're raging assholes.) That jams up the entire city, as block after block becomes a parking lot. Then once the train passes that slowly untangles, but you still end up with intersections blocked for what seems like ages, ambulances and fire trucks stuck in traffic, etc. Sometimes they need to wait for rail lines to clear, so they just park the train across the middle of the city for a bit. Literally cutting the city in half.
They do it because they legally can, and there's nothing that the city or the hundreds of thousands of people pissed off at tha
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Lol, yeah, those Europeans and their high speed trains. If only they could build airplanes as well as Boeing!
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Rail connected ports are very common. Ports like Rotterdam handle thousands of containers a day. A large percentage of these containers are transhipped onto railways for onward trips all over Europe.
As for being slow.???
9 days to ship a 40ft container from Bejing to Berlin by rail is not slow. You could not do that by road.
One freight train can take many, many trucks off the road for long journeys. In Europe and China most of those trains are electrically powered (no Diesel involved).
Not everywhere is as de
Rail built the 'burbs before autos were available. (Score:2)
It was mostly killed off in the US except for the east coast where it's a valuable necessity superior for commuting into urban areas where traffic and lack of parking make using an auto a miserable and slow experience.
For example one can easily walk (as residents have done since the 1800s) to many local rail stations in northern New Jersey then take trains into NYC, and they can use their phones and notebooks for business or pleasure on the way.
HSR would permit commutes from more desirable, AFFORDABLE dista
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You just made a typical argument in favor of technology to justify an economic argument: ie faster rail (technology) can compete with air travel. It cannot, which is why it has never been successful in the US.
Faster rail travel has never been tried in the U.S., and rail travel used to be highly successful in the U.S. The reason it stopped being highly successful after WWII is largely because the interstate highway system made driving so much easier that people weren't willing to do it.
Highway via truck or car - the most expensive form by far, but uniquely has the distinct advantage of delivering anywhere there's a road. This is called drayage, or the last mile, or any other names; it is the only way to deliver to any point anywhere.
And yet because our government treats much of the road repair costs as an externality, it still ends up being an order of magnitude cheaper than the actual cost. This is one of the reasons rail is not used more for shipping than
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Check out the Chuo Shinkansen. Tokyo to Nagoya at 500kph, due to open in 2027. They already have a working section and are busy building out the full track.
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except ya know there are operating maglevs in the world running every day, so its not exactly a stretch that someone could build a new one.