Within the scope of land travel, it’s clear it can be built. If it isn’t built, of course, that’s a choice. But it’s a lie to say it cannot be done.
Even at 300mph, which IIRC is much faster than normal operations on existing system, transcontinental travel becomes "too slow." The opposition would be insurmountable to making it take 12+ hours to travel from NYC to LA, for example.
Effectively would split the continent in a way that it hasn't been for generations. Rountes like NYC<->Chicago would get annoyingly slower, but long routes like DC<->Seattle would become an "almost never" trip by train @ 200mph (even assuming direct, as-the-crow-flies). Practically, you're talking "east coast to Asia" durations to cross the continent. Non-starter.
Disclaimer: I love trains. I want high speed trains deployed widely in the US.
The good news is that 300 kmh is really fast, and rail is usually much more time-efficient at the endpoints (i.e. stations are more central and there's less waiting). In China, Shanghai-Beijing (approximately LA to San Francisco) is now possible in 4h30. Given the endpoint advantage, that is more than competitive with plane travel, and much more pleasant.
As of this year, China also has a high-speed capsule sleeper that gets you from Beijing to Guangzhou (CORRECTION: 1875 km) in 12 hours at an average speed of 180 kmh. It's still night travel, not every American would be interested. But it shows what's possible.
I don't understand. It looks like the Chinese route is ~1200 miles and the US route is about 2500 miles. At the same 180kmh, wouldn't that imply a full 24 hours on a train?
re: LA-SF, I do think HSR could make a big dent on each side of the continent. But the reality is Americans are accustomed to crossing the entire continent quickly, and HSR is not yet a substitute for that.
Tangential - the source of my faulty research was Claude Haiku 4.5, which I will quote verbatim: "Two major US cities separated by approximately 2230 km are New York City, New York and Los Angeles, California." I know that figure is too low but believed it anyway. I've just asked for better figures and it's completely unable to answer accurately. Well well.
It already takes 6 hours to fly. Add in security, checked bags, getting to and from the airport and it's close to 10 hours. Also you waste a day or ruin a night's sleep on the redeye.
Compared to that an overnight train with a bed sounds delightful. People could do almost-day-trips, coast-to-coast, with no ill effects. Leave LA tonight, shop/sightsee/eat all day in NYC, take in a show, hop on the late train back to LA the following day. This is pretty near impossible today unless you have a private jet.
10 hours is still significantly faster than a hypothetical HSR. Remember that it would also have to stop along the way. Secon, not everyone lives/is traveling to a place that is near a hypothetical train station; you have to keep in mind that American cities tend toward sprawl. HSR leaving from e.g. downtown LA would still be less convenient for e.g. the folks who live in the Valley. It's definitely not a 10-hour excursion for many people to transit the country (source: I did this for years for work).
> Also you waste a day or ruin a night's sleep on the redeye.
Highly dependent on the individual & service class. But the point of this is you're actually physically there in less time.
> Leave LA tonight, shop/sightsee/eat all day in NYC, take in a show, hop on the late train back to LA the following day. This is pretty near impossible today unless you have a private jet.
You're going to get a lot of pushback from people who have been to weddings on the other side of the continent, since they will have done this. Most of them do not have private jets, it's just a common thing Americans do.
Keep in mind these old downtown stations built in 1900 won’t be able to handle the kind of passenger counts that would “need” to be shifted from the airports, so don’t delude yourself into thinking you wouldn’t need big train stations built in the outskirts, crowded and irritating to get to, like we have with modern airports.
Your day trip thing sounds even more confusing. That itinerary that’s “near impossible” with fast flight becomes more impossible with trains that take 2-3x longer. Also, sleeper train tickets are incredibly expensive compared to coach, because of how much space they take up and the cost of upkeep for these little suites. They’re always going to be expensive, like the redeye flight on a lie-flat bed. So again, no different than what we have today, just much, much slower and less accessible to the masses.
At least the future can default on sovereign debt, it cannot default on the energy and resources required to repair physical systems required for survival, that debt is the ultimate recourse debt. There is nowhere to run from it.
https://climatechangetracker.org/climate-change-progress/cur...
https://actuaries.org.uk/media/ni4erlna/planetary-solvency.p... (page 32 risk impact matrix)
(day job is risk assessment and management, and the lens through which I see and model this entire system)
Which sucks, because I really would go for a US high-speed rail network.