[image] What I wish high-speed rail were like in North America
[image] What I wish high-speed rail were like in North America
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).
Imagine Montréal<->New York in 2h instead of 11h... We could go there the morning like leave at 6AM from Montreal and be in NYC at 8AM, spend the day there, and go back at like 10PM
“I guess crossing the Rocky Mountains is impossible”
-OP
For high-speed rail? Basically, yes. Unless you're into spending a couple million bucks per mile to rip out big chunks of the mountain. High speed rail can't reasonably navigate tight turns or steep grades.
The car centric infra is one of the things that might do the states in at some point unless power production and storage and raw materials is resolved
I love the Buffalo to Mexico City line
Canada is actually making bank because their pacific nw to midwest rail system is better than US ports so a publicly owned mixed traffic route from WA or OR to the great lakes is needed to compete with canada for shipping traffic.
Question? Why can't the silent majority start pushing these endeavors?
FL has bright line But I'm unaware of other HSR in the states.
Why aren't there connections to those states in north west of the map?
I tried to keep it semi-realistic. There's a ton of mountains and very few people east of the Cascades. Regular non-HSR trains would still run there. HSR can't handle nearly as sharp turns or nearly as steep gradients, so building HSR through mountains gets crazy expensive crazy fast. Without population density to support it, it'd probably be a boondoggle to build HSR there. Plus, the vast majority of travel is regional, so most trips in the PNW would be served quiet adequately by having that West Coast HSR line.
Of course, if the goal were to completely replace airplanes and demolish the interstate system, then HSR might make more sense.
Edmonton-Calgary LOL
Just saw it once you said it haha
I think you would need an east-west line further north - perhaps continue west from Omaha or Denver - to make east coast to west coast travel practical.
IIRC I clocked that NY-LA line at something like 14 hours with medium HSR and down to 10 with the newest shit that can run on steel. In either case it's plenty fast for a sleeper train. There's also a pre-existing corridor, and, most importantly, massive population centres: A sleeper each direction each day won't nearly be enough to cover demand but that's no biggie you can spread them out and e.g. have people get up or start sleeping at Huston (allowing them to get on and off) or let them sleep through the whole of Texas. That's already three trains each giving the passengers even more possibilities.
You probably want to close the middle traverse from Colorado to Oregon and then connect to whatever the Canadians are doing east-west, but that doesn't mean that the southern corridor doesn't make sense in isolation.
Maybe Seattle->Spokane, Spokane->Boise->SLC->Denver, Spokane->Minneapolis.
I think there also needs to be more in Canada, Vancouver->Calgary->Winnipeg->Toronto.
Transit shouldn't be profitable... But the cost to build an HSR rail (which costs more than traditional rail) that went that distance vs ridership that a Vancouver to Toronto line would see to recoup some of that cost would make it a really tough sell to tax payers.
It's different in the US with 10x population.