I tried to make it fairly realistic. Obviously I would like HSR absolutely everywhere, but a line through middle of nowhere Montana probably would not see much ridership and would come at extreme cost (especially in the mountains).

  • barsoap@lemm.eeEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    Night trains don’t tend to have many stops, less than ordinary HSR ones. And really all that empty space in the US should lead to the average speed being quite a bit higher compared to maximum when compared to Europe. But, all that said, don’t nail me on the details. Even if it’s a 16 hour trip, there’d still be plenty of people who would be interested.

    And then, well, LA-Huston and NY-Huston make sense independently so the track is already there.

    and on conventional rail connecting every city in the US.

    Bombardier Talent 3’s are technically HSR, given that they max out at 200km/h. Tracks and rolling stock supporting on the order of 150km/h aren’t a rarity for S-Bahn systems, here, that’s more like commuter rail. Meanwhile, Amtrak is running trains over vast sections at more like 50km/h because the track is so shoddy you can’t go any faster. (That’s a sensible average speed for subway systems…) Those vast sections have to be rebuilt, anyway, and while you’re at it you can just as well build them to higher standards as the cost increase is almost negligible compared to what building non-shoddy track costs.