This is possibly one of the most bizarre creations I've seen in the livery designer yet, but you've done an excellent job! Now I want Superliners in TSW that much more.
Pretty- but you do realize the US does have HSTs? The 350 km/h (218 mph) Avelia Liberty - built by Alstom, the same as the Duplex and other TGVs. In fact the sister Avelia Horizon will be deployed by SNCF in the near future to replace older HST models
Except the Avelia Liberty will reach nowhere near those speed unless the NEC gets rebuilt or realigned. Its current projected max speed atm will only be 160mph.
True enough- but then, how often and for how long to German ICEs run at those speeds? Same basic issue: the track can't handle them.
And here in Canada, due to extreme temperature variation, in most place where the train tracks are located, it not unusual to have variation from +20 to -20 and even below within a 24hrs period Also the geography, in most part that have habitation, it is mostly march or swap. Both condition make for the track to expand and retract and prevent the proper highspeed track layout, all the passenger train in Canada at this time are limited to a maximum of 160KM
While in the States the problem is more vested interests, commercial lobbying and pork-barrel politics
California is working on a high-speed line, Texas is too. Brightline West is also in the works to connects Las Vegas and LA.
And money. Lots and lots of money. Upgrading the NEC to HST standard would mean either taking big chunks of at least one if not both carriageways out of service for a substantial period of time - simply not possible - or building third and fourth parallel tracks which would require buying hundreds of linear miles of real estate in the nation's most densely-populated region (and some of its most expensive, around DC and NYC). As for California-- 77 billion (taxpayer) dollars to build a 120-mile line from the mighty metropolis of Merced to that brilliant boomtown Bakersfield? The *real* problem is that the incredible amounts of money required can't be balanced by any realistic revenue projections.
The wealthiest country in the world have no money to build HSRs. What a joke. There might be many reasons why the US never got a standing HSR, but money is not one of them.
Yeah what a waste, would of been better to start it either in the Bay Area or the LA Basin, the central valley doesn't want or need this. Hopefully Brightline West can start theirs soon (Even though it only goes to Victorville) But I think the pandemic hurt their ability to find backers for the project.
Not "has no money", but rather "is not disposed to blow money on an investment with very little return"
I think we should be careful not to judge all high speed rail projects in the US by the one in California. It no more disproves the existence of effective high speed transit than the Jacksonville Jaguars disprove the existence of good football - substitute Sheffield United if your football is round. I have advocated for better transit here in the US for a number of years. I think it is fair to say that many concerned about the cost are unaware of just how much we subsidize auto and airline travel. We also need to be aware of the total costs of continuing to address transportation issues by pouring more asphalt. We should also be careful when we talk about transit paying for itself at the farebox; that is an unrealistic expectation. All forms of transit, from sidewalks to superhighways to high speed trail are subsidized. We should rather look at transit as an investment. Clearly some investments are better than others and I share your skepticism about the cost of the California project. I am eyeing the ongoing project between Dallas and Houston and hoping that it demonstrates just how effective transit can be at providing environmentally friendly economic development. As for the original post, I look forward to the day I can leave my car at home and climb in such a train in the US.
What mitigates against any major rail project in the US is that Americans are and always have been wedded (I want to say "welded" ) to their automobiles. Amazingly, only 5% of us take public transportation. We have such an extensive expressway system that rail cannot compete. Even air travel is reserved for longer, cross country trips. Except for a few corridors on the east coast, HSR will never be viable.
What we need to be careful about is not plowing a huge chunk of change into what would amount to Concorde-on-rails: sexy, fast, cool, definitely a status symbol- but economically either a disaster (at its original fare level) or simply a constant money-hemorrhager at fares that restricted it to the superrich. Taxpayers are unlikely to be happy at spending their money on toys for the top 0.1%
I am interested in the argument that no-one uses it so there is no need to invest in it. The phrase "build it and they will come" springs to mind. US has never really had HS rail and so it would be an addition, an additional way to travel in a certain level of comfort at a certain speed and cost. I think there might be ways it would be very successful. Certainly the 3 day journeys from the far west to Chicago would be easily beaten in terms of time compared to driving or current non-HS rail, plus you wouldn't be the driver (so you could drink/sleep/work) and it might be cheaper than flying? I think there is a niche open to the right product. The omission in the discussion is the absolute hatred for spending tax-payers dollars on infrastructure in the US. I find that local airports are very poorly off in terms of reliability and punctuality as a result. It is a real shame everything is so polarised. Sure no-one wants wasteful spending, but often you grow through initial investments in infrastructure, that is true of everywhere in the world and the US is no exception.
I don't disagree; where we run into problems is that practically the only routes which would see enough passenger volume to make it viable, even at acceptable levels of red ink (Amtrak already loses a billion dollars a year), are precisely those routes (Washington-New York-Boston, San Francisco-Los Angeles etc) where it would be the most shockingly difficult (=expensive) to do it. In fact, Amtrak's routine operating losses, and the very existence of Amtrak, weigh in the balance against "if you build it they will come." Congress created Amtrak because none of the railroads could run passenger rail profitably; there simply wasn't enough demand for it and they were dropping passenger service left and right. Cool as the old Silver Meteor and Pocahontas and 20th Century Limited were, they bled money because not enough people wanted to ride them. I can really only see one potentially profitable route which wouldn't have to go through densely developed (= hugely expensive) real estate: Los Angeles-Las Vegas. Although the Sierras would still be an engineering challenge; HSTs need tunnels, they can't handle grades.
The Sierra Nevadas dont run that far south, the biggest obstacle that route would face is Cajon pass, and finding a route to LAUPT. Brightline West is already gonna make that a possibility, though their original plan is from Victorville to Vegas, using the median of I-15. Construction was supposed to start at the end of 2020.
High-speed rail has a sweet spot of a few hundred miles, shorter than that and it doesn't offer significant time savings, longer than that and it struggles to compete with air travel (unless you believe in hyperloop). The problem with high-speed rail in the US is that major cities are so damn far apart, while the UK has the opposite problem that cities are too close together - London to Birmingham is only 100 miles and the new HS2 route bypasses at least two other cities (Milton Keynes and Coventry) in order to maintain high speeds. The other problem is that US cities (particularly the 'newer' ones) are very spread out. High speed rail might get you from SFO to LA in a few hours, but an LA resident could easily spend another couple of hours driving to the station.
At risk of going off on a further tangent, I feel obliged to defend Amtrak. Pre- pandemic, Amtrak covered about 95% of its operating costs on a relatively small subsidy. The often criticized “money losing” long distance routes provide 100’s of millions of economic impact to the communities they serve. This sentiment was perhaps best phrased by Rail Passenger’s Association President Jim Mathews when he testified before Congress in September: “I’ve said it to this committee before, and I’ll say it to anyone who’ll listen—it’s not a question of if trains make money, it’s about who trains make money for. Rail corridors generate value by acting as economic engines in the communities they serve—through jobs, retail, mobility, tourism and real-estate development. The ‘profit’ goes not to Amtrak, but to the communities served, often to the tune of billions of dollars.”
The notion of a 2,000 mile high speed rail line from LA to Chicago is, I'm sorry to say, pure fantasy. The cost would be out of this world and, were it to be built, the fares would have to be astronomical to recoup the investment, far exceeding the price of an airline ticket.
America is one of a few countries in the world that have high speed rail right now. Europe is full of high speed railways, China is leading the charge of high speed infrastructure and even India has a high speed train! Wouldn’t surprise me if Africa started planning a high speed rail network of their own in the next 20-30 odd years or so.
These are my liveries, if you want to post them thats fine but at least acknowledge these are not your please.
One has already been set up in Morocco running through Casablanca, Rabat and some other cities but that is just 1 line. And it uses trains based on the TGV Duplex!
I typically don't post on these forums, so I'm not aware of how to do that. I'm not trying to spam, I simply am saying thanks to people who liked my liveries.
