A DC to Boston Maglev Would Be Awesome (and you know it)

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WHY AM I TALKING ABOUT MAGLEV when the U.S. can't even build a single proper high speed rail line? Well, gather 'round, ye of little faith, because we're about to make some minor adjustments to the intercity travel Overton window.
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Previous CityNerd Videos referenced:
The Lost World of US Passenger Rail: • The Sad and Awful Way ...
High Speed Rail playlist: • High Speed Rail
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Resources:
northeastmagle...
www.cleveland....
inthesetimes.c...
www.japantimes...
www.jrailpass....
www.washington...
www.theverge.c...
www.bloomberg....
www.washington...
www.theverge.c...
en.wikipedia.o...
www.express.co...
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Images
North America population density map, Credit: dem10, Creative #: 1478362358, License type: Royalty-free, Collection: iStock / Getty Images Plus
Transrapid 09 at Emsland By Állatka - Own work, Public Domain, commons.wikime...
Pudong Maglev By User Alex Needham (own photography) on en.wikipedia - Originally from en.wikipedia; description page is (was) here, Public Domain, commons.wikime...
By Lawrence, Martha; Bullock, Richard; Liu, Ziming - Lawrence, Martha; Bullock, Richard; Liu, Ziming (2019). China's High-Speed Rail Development. Washington, DC: World Bank. doi:10.1596/978-1-4648-1425-9., CC BY 3.0 igo, commons.wikime...
Maglev diagram By Cool Cat, at the English Wikipedia project, CC BY-SA 3.0, commons.wikime...
Maglev diagram By Moralapostel (vektorisiert von Stefan 024) - Own work, Public Domain, commons.wikime...
Superconducting magnet bogie By No machine-readable author provided. Yosemite~commonswiki assumed (based on copyright claims). - No machine-readable source provided. Own work assumed (based on copyright claims)., CC BY-SA 3.0, commons.wikime...
Shanghia maglev by Xenotron, CC BY-SA 3.0, en.wikipedia.o...
Changsha Maglev By Baycrest - Own work, CC BY-SA 2.5, commons.wikime...
Acela By Das48 - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, commons.wikime...
Limp Bizkit via Getty Images, Credit: KMazur / Contributor, Editorial#: 74699884, Collection: WireImage, Date created: October 02, 1999
Chuo Shinkansen By Saruno Hirobano - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, commons.wikime...
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[@CityNerd]

OK, so leading edge technology like maglev simply isn't ever gonna happen in your lifetime if you live in the US. But take heart! Even if you can't ride intercity transport that lives up to the space-age "impossible is nothing" ideals of a country that sent people to the moon, you can at least shave your face (or other) with technology that lives up to those ideals. That's right - I'm talking about Henson Shaving. Go to hensonshaving.com/CITYNERD and enter "CITYNERD" at checkout to get 100 free blades with your purchase. You won't regret it, seriously. I'm sold. (Literally)

[@emmetcosten9453]

Hey, you don't know what will or won't happen in my life time, we can still dream! Maybe we'll get that miracle of a room temperature super conductor and have maglevs between every major city hub.

[@Novusod]

Maglev is awesome but completely impractical in terms of what can be done in this country. We can't even replace the 100 year old catenary wires on the North East corridor. You have to walk before you can run. Crawl before you can walk.

[@AMPProf]

Naww we need Scifi beer

[@jamalgibson8139]

@@Novusod That's why maglev is actually an interesting take. We're terrible at maintaining and upgrading old rail infrastructure, but maglev is new, sexy, and exciting, so we can much more readily convince politicians and the public that this is the future, rather than trying to explain why switching power distribution to 25kva is a good thing.

[@Conclusius68]

You might want to frame it as a military project? You know, for logistics and all that?

[@Tohtes314]

Wake up and go to Cheesecake Factory in DC hop on the maglev, make it to NYC for a lunch at CCF, back on the maglev to enjoy a fine CCF dinner in Boston Sounds like futuristic hokum to me.

[@mpetersen6]

Well, if you have desert at each CCF that is only going to be about 9k calories. Unless you go with the Skinnylicous menu. Now a male along the Metra North line extended all the way to Milwaukee would let me go to Leon's or Cobb's for frozen custard. 😋

[@nolanlego]

Didn't even stop in Philly :'^(

[@RebelliousThemeMusic]

Id prefer Times Square Applebee's, but i respect your vision

[@djstubed]

I thought there was not a Cheesecake Factory in Boston, but there is exactly one. I can't argue with the logic, even though there is no CCF in Manhattan. If you have room, you can stop at Sbarro in Times Square.

[@colormedubious4747]

@@djstubed Sbarro is a horrible choice -- unless you need to purge your bowels for a colonoscopy.

[@NozomuYume]

A clarification on the shinkansen maglev permitting issues. It *wasn't* NIMBYism, so much as thinly veiled YIMBYism. Shizuoka prefecture was upset they weren't getting a station on the maglev line, because the direct path only passed through a rural sliver of the prefecture, far too deep underground to build a station, thus effectively bypassing it. They basically played political brinksmanship with the project. The eventual deal worked out after a change in administration was that in compensation for not getting a maglev station, Shizuoka would get some new conventional shinkansen infrastructure connected to the existing Tokaido line that passes through it. i.e. they weren't upset the maglev was going through Shizuoka. They were upset it went through without stopping. The water rights issue was the cudgel they wielded to get concessions.

[@KameraChimera]

This is similar to my comment about skipping New Jersey entirely. And that is a lot more area that the line would go through and a lot more people that would be bypassed.

[@jdillon8360]

interesting. Thanks for sharing that information.

[@CityNerd]

Yeah, that's probably a better way of putting it

[@csus4add9]

​@@KameraChimeraTRENTON MAKES, THE WORLD TAKES

[@Lessinath]

@@csus4add9 To be fair to the train skipping NJ, I don't usually enjoy stopping in people's armpits either.

[@dudeonthasopha]

Moving to the NEC was such a huge change. Getting on a train and being in the middle of a different city in a few hours was a game changer. I just want it on par with the rest of the world.

[@Ray03595]

3hrs from Newark to DC isn’t a bad deal. But we can go FASTER! 😊 but seriously we are blessed to even have what we currently do compared to the rest of the country. Would love to explore more of the US but it almost demands flying which is just a huge hassle. So find my trips always being somewhere in Norttheast. Trains are just better

[@stickynorth]

It's like being the ACTUAL developed world not just the part people talk about in some utopian ideal sense but isn't really true.. I know, I'm from an area that claims to be the best on earth yet can't even string a GD Greyhound route along a 160 mile corridor with 4 million people along it... SMH..

[@gekquad116]

Just moved away from the NEC to the Midwest and not being able to do this is something I dearly miss.

[@lh457725]

Hell yeah! I hope to move to the Northeast some day.

[@jakob7116]

On par? High speed maglev only exists in one place rn right, in Shanghai, and they didn’t go forward with it but conventional hsr instead

[@robertheinrich2994]

15 minute intervals for trains mean, that people stop memorizing the train schedule and start treating it as a part of infrastructure that is just there, ready to use, to a certain extent just like they treat cars. hop into the train and go somewhere. austria is currently on the way to achieve this. long distance intercity travel, replacing cars. of course, the shinkansen is a different beast. during peak time, there is a train every 3 minutes. people stop worrying being late for their train, because the next one will be there very soon.

[@DiamondKingStudios]

To be fair, we Americans have the opposite lack of need for a schedule. Whenever there’s a passenger train on the platform, we hop aboard, since there won’t be another one until tomorrow (or in 2-3 days if you’re in Cincinnati or San Antonio) The way I see it, trains should be frequent enough that the only reason why you’d need to remember the schedule is if the originating station is at a junction (don’t want to get on the wrong train), and even then information boards should direct you to the right platform.

[@oppionatedindividual8256]

Like the tube in London. (Every 3 minutes)

[@JBG1968]

That is the key . Convenience . The trains in Japan run so frequently that you don’t really need to plan to take a trip . Just show up when you want and a train will be departing soon

[@meneldal]

Shinkansen basic schedule outside peak is one per 10 mins (of the fastest nozomi line, so not counting the slower ones). Most JR lines have basic trains every 10 mins and many way fewer. The frequency is truly crazy. In Europe at best it's like one every 30 mins for high speed train

[@robertheinrich2994]

@@meneldal Austria, Westbahn-line (Vienna, Linz, Salzburg, then splits to Innsbruck and Munich): ÖBB one per hour, DB runs their own trains with ÖBB, and Westbahn every 30 min. If they would coordinate, that would be a high speed train every 15 minutes.

[@jonny727272]

As someone who is local to DC, I dream of this all the time! Baltimore is a hub of culture of experiences to be had. I'm often driving up there for concerts during the week. I've looked into taking a train or bus, but they're so slow and infrequent, that doing a 2+ hour drive in rush hour traffic is always the better choice. Not to mention the services ending at 11pm, so I hope the show ends by then!

[@jspihlman]

I just went to the B&O Railroad Museum last weekend and the irony of it was that I wanted to take the light rail and couldn't because it didn't start service until 10:30! Ridiculous!

[@pavelow235]

You can't find cultural experiences in DC !? wow! who's the native here?

[@Undecided0]

You can’t just take the Marc from DC to Baltimore? It’s only $9 one way.

[@CaradhrasAiguo49]

"taking a train or bus, but they're slow" -- for the 40 miles between Baltimore Penn and D.C. Union Station, the slowest scheduled Amtrak is around 51 minutes, the fastest (#2122) as little as 28 minutes. Not in a trillion years could driving be faster than that

[@jyutzler]

@@Undecided0 Not for an evening activity. Last train is around 10.

[@roy.mclean]

I've been on highspeed rail in France and China. The convenience is mind blowing. They take you right into town, not to an airport on the outskirts. Transportation from there is much faster to the office or hotel. You still need to go through security, but it is less detailed because no one has hijacked a train or tried to crash it into a skyscraper. It is inherently a more secure form of travel. It also doesn't treat you like cattle, even in China. Great video.

[@ediddyish]

"no one has hijacked a train " Oh really? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Thalys_train_attack

[@JosephLopez-dd1rl]

Possible video idea for the future: "Can anyone build a railroad?" We base a lot of our assumptions on public transit that they have to be built by giant consortiums, but technically, can anyone create a service in which they buy land, build infrastructure, purchase stock, etc? Could something like that be the work of many pooling funds, even on the small scale?

[@ikelom]

I agree! I wanna be able to build my own metro line ^^

[@JosephLopez-dd1rl]

@@ikelom I do as well... kind of. I'm tired of waiting for corporations or government entities to say my part of the US meets some kind of population and economic benefit threshold. We're a country of 330 million. Ostensibly, over 80 million of us care enough to contribute to improvement. So why wait? Why not collaborate?Why not crowdfund small town rail?

[@pranshukrishna5105]

@@JosephLopez-dd1rl how will you do it exactly?

[@DarkwarriorJ]

"can anyone create a service in which they buy land, build infrastructure, purchase stock, etc? Could something like that be the work of many pooling funds, even on the small scale?" Technically yes, this is what any publically traded megacorporation sort of is. This isn't the answer we're hoping for though :p

[@birbluv9595]

I’m thinking about rights-of-way, all the private land you’d have to pass through, legal paperwork, blah blah blah. This could be very difficult.

[@sharpieJuice73]

A few months ago, I attended a small event with some of the leaders of this project in Baltimore, and it looks like it will be really transformative for the entire country’s rail network. I really hope this gets completed in reasonable time, and I really believe that the project will inspire leaders around the country to step up their game and build more high-speed rail on other corridors between many major cities throughout the US.

[@SkipGole]

@sharpieJuice73 Ray’s graphic would allow for maglev to be valuable if built up to 1700 some miles. D.C. to Chicago is only 800 some miles. This is pie-in-the-sky but it would be a total game changer!

[@maumor2]

Improve Amtrak existing NEC service to get it to 200mph or a totally new system and alignment that goes 300mph? Question for the ages that will depend on how much money you need for each alternative. But I'm sure we will keep adding lanes to I-95 without even blinking an eye at how much money goes on the never ending "one more lane will solve the issue"

[@barryrobbins7694]

By the time the U.S. gets maglev, the rest of the world will have Star Trek style Transporters.

[@charlienyc1]

"Beam me up, CityNerd."

[@darkwoodmovies]

TBH, America would almost certainly be the place something like that would be invented. It's a weird country, everything is about the $$$

[@barryrobbins7694]

@@darkwoodmovies The power structures in the United States are definitely rooted in money, more so than any other country. Beneficial technological advances can happen anywhere, in the United States that’s not enough - it has to make money. That’s why there is no high-speed rail in the United States.

[@darkwoodmovies]

@@barryrobbins7694 Right. But sci-fi tech is different, and that would most definitely be very profitable. And not just that, but holy sh*t the military would love it.

[@davidstorrs]

I can second the Henson razor rec. I bought one and it is brilliant. Beautiful, feels good in your hand, and gives a much better shave than any safety razor I've had in the past.

[@Austinrkr]

The content I’m here for: dreaming about what could be and the numbers to back up why it makes sense.

[@CityNerd]

Glad to serve

[@colormedubious4747]

One word: COST.

[@Austinrkr]

@@colormedubious4747 OMG! Brilliant.

[@colormedubious4747]

@@Austinrkr I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic or supportive, so let me expound upon my abbreviated brilliance: Ray did not address the opportunity cost of maglev. How many miles of conventional HSR could be built for the cost of a single mile of maglev? According to the FRA's 2005 Report to Congress, the cost of maglev ranges from FOUR to NINE TIMES that of conventional HSR. Therefore, we could connect Boston to DC by maglev OR we could build 1,800 to 4,050 miles of HSR connecting a broader swath of cities east of the Mississippi River. Can we afford to do both? Our national debt recently surpassed 34 TRILLION dollars, and we are now paying more than a TRILLION DOLLARS PER YEAR in INTEREST alone on it. So, no we cannot. Elections have consequences and politicians can't do basic math.

[@Austinrkr]

@@colormedubious4747 still not sure what you’re advocating. Are you in favor of HSR, of doing nothing to facilitate the movement of people (because: COST), or something else? To be fair, I don’t really expect that the comment section of a fantasy proposal video is where we will solve any problems.

[@soviut303]

A similar corridor exists along the southern edge of Ontario between Windsor, Toronto and Montreal/Ottawa. It's already a rail corridor and could be converted to high speed rail relatively easily by eliminating a bunch of level crossings. Maglev would certainly require more dedicated infrastructure, but either option would pay for itself with the number of short hop flights it would eliminate between Toronto and Montreal or Ottawa alone. I could see both corridors meeting at several points too.

[@EdwardM-t8p]

Get the international issues settled and the train could go farther through Detroit to Chicago!

[@TheHothead101]

Shoutout to Brian Mulroney for privatizing CN and all of the railroads the government had built for them, so now trains between Toronto and Montreal are perma-gimped by freight.

[@lassepeterson2740]

There is not enough people that go to Windsor . The heavy autombile traffic on the 401 is largely thru to the USA . Getting off a high speed train in Windsor is the middle of nowhere . Montreal to Toronto via Ottawa on a new line ok , but Toronto Union station is at over capacity now , so where would the high speed train arrive ?

[@stickynorth]

@@lassepeterson2740 Windsor is a de facto Detroit suburb and there's probably enough demand between the two...

[@stickynorth]

@@lassepeterson2740 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detroit%E2%80%93Windsor 5.976 MILLION is hardly nowhere...

[@BradPrichard]

The Shanghai Maglev is a white elephant, not because it doesn't work but because it doesn't actually take people to any of Shanghai's CBDs. Just kind of drops you in the middle of Pudong where most people don't want to be and competes with extremely affordable taxis, even cheaper bus service and the subway (yet cheaper but slow). In my experience, people ride it once to see what it's like, then never again.

[@c0rnichon]

Sounds about right. The Shanghai Maglev system was meant to connect German cities but the Germans gave it up because at the end it only had the novelty factor going for it. The Chinese bought the technology because at the time they were building their brand as a future oriented economy and didn't care about the price tag or the viability in the long run. A similar thing is happening with the hyperloop. The Emirates and Saudi Arabia are eying with the technology for the prestige it could give them but conventional railway would probably be more sensible in the long run.

[@BradPrichard]

@@c0rnichon I love CityNerd and his videos, but I think conventional high speed rail is probably the way to go. It's fast and cost effective enough to do the things we need to do. Maglev (proven but expensive technology!) and hyperloop (uh, definitely not proven although new claims are being made) are interesting. Neither seem particularly useful at the moment, though.

[@algerpiston168]

And take a look at the proposed location for Baltimore's Maglev station: more than two miles away from the nearest EDGE of the city center, with a desolate post-industrial landscape in between that no one would walk through if their life depended on it.

[@Nozizaki]

Think of all the Cheesecake Factories that could be accessed in just an hour or two! 🤩

[@stickynorth]

Or ones that could be added to each station along the route as a co-branded venture.. CCF Presents American Maglev... On board snack bar? CCF branded eats!

[@Osty789]

I've ridden the Shinkansen from Tokyo to Kyoto. 1 trip the man sitting next to me explained, he lives and works in Kyoto but once a week he has to go the 280 miles into Tokyo for work. With a 2 hour commute each way it's a long day but he sleeps in his own bed. To drive is 5-7 hours each way. The Maglev will cut that down to less than many in the U.S. face for their daily commute

[@ayanda5967]

If there's one thing that can motivate Americans who oppose HSR to build HSR, it is to sell it as the best, groundbreaking thing. In other words, massive projects get done in the States when the motivation behind them is to portray the States as the greatest country on earth, and Maglev has that wow factor. If HSR is portrayed as revolutionary, first-of-its-kind, groundbreaking, American technology, I'm sure a lot of opposition would be more in favor of it. If we were to build the first Maglev corridor of the size and capacity mentioned in the video, all the above adjectives would be true and help convince the more "freedom-oriented" Americans that HSR is actually really cool.

[@critiqueofthegothgf]

it's shocking to me that the most nationalistic of us aren't frothing at the mouth towards the prospect of having the best passenger trains in the world.

[@jamalgibson8139]

The heritage foundation literally calls high speed rail old, outdated technology, so you're definitely onto something here. They might have a harder time calling maglev outdated, but don't put it past conservative organizations to just make up whatever name they think will shut down good public works projects.

[@WakandaleezaRazz]

Idk many who oppose it and I live in Texas where ours is in the works. It’s a win for car owners because it takes traffic off the interstates. Everyone can benefit

[@WakandaleezaRazz]

@@jamalgibson8139Why blame conservatives? I live in Texas and we’re building rail and built Houston’s light rail system. Meanwhile “progressive” Austin voted against all of it. Stop making this so political

[@jamalgibson8139]

@@WakandaleezaRazz Um. You do realize that the Dallas to Houston corridor doesn't include Austin, right? Perhaps that's why they voted against it. But that's got nothing to do with what I wrote. I wrote "conservative organizations," which means things like the heritage foundation or CATO institute, not conservatives, as in voters. Maybe you should ask yourself why those organizations are so opposed to this type of thing before getting into arguments with people.

[@Cptn.Viridian]

This would be super cool, but we do need to keep in mind that this is valuble as a super express, but we should still focus on building a regular high speed line as well, which can serve not only destinations between these biggest cities, but also nearby corridors as cities. Even with a direct maglev connection between Philadelphia and New York, a trip between say Harrisburg and Newark NJ would be better served by HSR, essepcially when the rail northeast corridor is upgraded consitent 165mph+. In addition these routes would also be better served because more highspeed one seat rides to the various brances of the NEC could be implemented when the large Trunk capacity is borne by the NEMagLev.

[@brimbles4999]

i do agree with the go big or go home idea of if you're building an entirely new corridor anyway you may as well get the most value out of it, however one of the biggest issues with maglev is that it can only be used by maglev trains, while conventional highspeed has been so successful because it doesnt need to be used by purely 350km/hr trains as countries get their value out of them by also running slower 250km/hr or less on the same rail lines as high speed trains are for good reason much less frequent than a commuter service (even services that have 3 trains an hour still have slower trains run inbetween because 20mins is a lot of time to have nothing using the expensive rail infrastructure)

[@brimbles4999]

knowing that maglev is basically a monorail but with magnets does mean we need to be careful with how excited we get for it (too many cities got over excited by regular monorails and look where they all are now) i think where maglev will prove most useful is along corridors that already have 350km/hr high speed rail and are congested to the point that they have trains running every 5 minutes at peak time (like japan) this is similer with what the uk was attempting with hs2, high speed wasnt really NEEDED between london and birmingham BUT the existing rail corridor was already bursting at the seams with congestion so the choice to both invest in high tech high speed rail while also increasing capacity was one of the few good ideas with the project (i dont need to go on with how the overall project went)

[@CraziFuzzy]

@@brimbles4999 I believe CN's point here is that if you don't already have a saturated HSR - because of reasons - but already have enough demand to saturate it if it was there - they you save money jumping up to servicing that theoretical demand.

[@CraziFuzzy]

The other advantage of desinging the HSR/MagLev route from scratch is that it can be designed for express service from the start. This means it is able to route away from minor population centers that an express route would skip anyway, potentially allowing different rights-of-way.

[@themutable5684]

I just want to say that as obviously incredible as a maglev line between Tokyo and Osaka seems just by the numbers on paper, when you have actually been on the ground in Tokyo, Nagoya, and Osaka and really felt how vast and lively each of these cities is, you realize that the numbers don't do that level of connectivity any justice. It's downright THICC ACCESS.

[@kenmatthews46]

It's fun to talk about Maglev in the U.S. but we all know that it ain't gonna happen. You should take a look at "The Grand Paris Express" project. Paris is in the process of doubling the size of its Metro with fully automated trains, 68 new stations, the trains will have 3min headways. Some above ground stations will have special pads to allow private developers to build apartments directly on top of the stations. Most of the new lines will be underground with some elevated. The goal is to relieve the pressure on central Paris Metro and allow people to go directly from suburb to suburb. It's underway, it's happening, and could be a great model for many American cities.

[@patrickfitzgerald2861]

Meanwhile, they turn a blind eye to the horrible living conditions in the surrounding suburbs where most of the immigrants live.

[@mpetersen6]

What's really needed is a way to cut construction costs and time. For all our infrastructure projects. Even on road projects we see the time length go far too long in comparison to project size. Some of this is due to construction companies bidding on and securing too many projects. This means they are stretched thin. One mistake that was made way back when the Interstate System was first started. A provision should have been required right from the start that part of the land acquisition should have included right of way for future rail systems. One of the best advertisements for HSR I can think of is being stuck in traffic and a HSR trainset goes by at 250 to 300 kph. Also one thing to keep in mind. HSR is not going to eliminate all Intercity travel by private automobile. It will eliminate a lot of it. Or at least the need. HSR really needs the support of feeder transport systems into and out of stations.

[@KingFinnch]

reenforced stations for private development above is extremely common worldwide, like, london was doing that in the 1800s

[@colormedubious4747]

@@mpetersen6 Typically, railroad rights of way in the USA are about 100 feet wide. Interstate highway minimum rights of way are typically about half that, but most are much wider than the average railroad ROW. There is PLENTY of "free real estate" available already!

[@colormedubious4747]

@@KingFinnch Three words: Grand Central Terminal. The many, many billions of dollars' worth of buildings along Park Avenue were famously built after the sale of the "air rights" above the terminal's rail yard, which was trenched below street level and liberally festooned with massive pillars to support the streets and future buildings.

[@Wico90YT]

But mah Freedom (to be forced into a small number of transportation means run by oligopolies)

[@ericjessee]

Mah freedom to get in my expensive and dangerous metal box and sit in gridlocked traffic because everyone else has no choice but to get in their expensive and dangerous metal box 🥲

[@Wico90YT]

@@ericjessee Don't hate on metal boxes when we go all the way and max out BRT. High Speed buses driven by AI in dedicated lanes.

[@CorporateShill66]

@@ericjessee THIS

[@wyw876]

Could this be answered with a price-per-distance analysis, paired with a sankey flow diagram to highlight whether the money flows to the workers or to the profit skimmers?

[@julietardos5044]

Pshaw! There's nothing more freeing than driving a vehicle with a unique identification label, and requiring you to submit your right thumb print to the government to operate.

[@gbizzotto]

10:08 when taking the train instead of flying you get back more time than the difference in travel time. you can't do much while you're in line for security, boarding or walking endless backrooms to and from gates, but you can work, read or sleep while on a train.

[@charliesullivan4304]

Thing is, this would be too fast to get much sleep. We need city-pairs connected by night trains at the exact right speed for it to take about 8-10 hours, so you can settle in, get a good night sleep, have breakfast and a shower and be ready to go in the new city, taking no more time than sleeping in a hotel and then instantly teleporting to the new city.

[@critiqueofthegothgf]

@@charliesullivan4304 should just do both. some people want practically instantaneous travel while others enjoy the sleeper train experience; we have the capacity to provide both

[@julietardos5044]

@@charliesullivan4304 I've done this in Europe. It's great! I really wish American youths didn't have to go all the way to Europe to ride the rails and explore all summer. We have a lot of great stuff here; you just have to drive or fly to get to it.

[@EdwardM-t8p]

​@@charliesullivan4304 Russia has this already! Correct me if I'm wrong but as I remember it, it's called the Midnight Train. Not in English but in Russia of course.

[@charliesullivan4304]

@@julietardos5044 it actually exists to a limited extent in the US. You can leave Albany, New York around 7:30 p.m. and get to Chicago at 10 AM, spending the night in a comfortable private room.

[@michelekendzie]

I haven't even watched yet and I already agree. I live an hour drive south of D.C. and I visited Boston for the first time on a road trip in summer 2023. I loved it and would love to visit it and other cities along the way by train!

[@Carsonist]

Meanwhile Amtrak begging for $100 billion to modernize their east coast electric system (from the 1920s) and getting 6 billion.

[@SteveGettingAroundPhilly]

The electrical system upgrade would only be around $4 billion, including the maintenence backlog on current equipment. The $100 billion is for bringing the whole line from DC to Boston to 190mph capable HSR, including building a whole new right of way in Connecticut (or Long Island) to circumvent the main area where the NEC is stupidly slow. So, the NEC is definitely going to improve long before any Maglev line gets started, let alone finished.

[@patdunne9592]

@@SteveGettingAroundPhillygood to know!

[@eugenetswong]

Are you sure? I thought that they got $600B a year or 2 ago.

[@Ry_TSG]

@@eugenetswongNo, the 1 trillion was part of a general infrastructure bill, with only about 60 billion dollars going to Amtrak across the entire country

[@Carsonist]

@@eugenetswong looks like I was wrong about the numbers here, misread an article. Regardless, they need way more money than they've been given to keep things working, not to mention upgrade things.

[@blinkingmanchannel]

Good video. What comes to my mind is the market share of air plus rail in the overall transit options. I'm thinking this because I think there's a complex soufflé of subsidies, both for oil and for airports. (And stroads?) And then security differences and the potential for sleeper trains. Trains and planes are obviously apples and oranges, but it sure was easier to go by train in Europe. I've come to almost hate being on an airplane nowadays. Can we put the train stations in the airport too? The problem with that is, of course, the fact that airports are waaaay out in the middle of nowhere, usually. (That's the other thing about air travel. I find it's really annoying to actually GET TO the airport and PARK MY CAR...) We could brainstorm a list of all the quality of life differences... You could do a live show! 😂 Having said all that, it might be worth noting that, as i understand it, commercial air and aircraft were, in part, a strategic decision during the cold war. Trains are worthless to a global superpower tasked with merchant maritime law enforcement. 🤷‍♂️

[@CityNerd]

Thanks, and very thoughtful comment!

[@awilder87]

Ugh, you reminded me of the trash leadership we had in Wisconsin, when I lived there, I was there when they rejected that federal funding for trains and even my car-centric family was confused by this choice. I agree, we need to think beyond our limited scope of thinking. I am on the Amtrak a couple times a month and having this option would be so much better and hopefully more affordable than Amtrak. I mean, why are some train trips in the Northeast just as much, if not more, than flying? One can dream.....

[@rickcobos1724]

Appalling that there’s no HSR between MIL and MAD as well as MIL and GB, and that Chicago HSR only reaches Kenosha.

[@PeterBlack-nl5hy]

Train competes well with flying in terms of time and comfort, therefore it can compete on pricing as well. Why should trains cost less if they are better or equal than flying? BTW, like flights, Amtrak gives substantial discounts for advance fares. E.g., an advance fare from HVN to EWR can be $25, while last minutes may be close to $100. I don't believe the commuter rail roads give advance purchase discounts, and they are cheaper than Amtrak but with more stops, which makes them slower.

[@69Buddha]

Just made the soul-crushing drive from southeastern PA to Boston area, passing through the wormhole in the space-time continuum that is Connecticut. I'm all for just about ANY other option than that drive. Maglev would be amazing.

[@Zalis116]

15:15 -- Gonna do things my way! It's my way! My way or the MagLev!

[@leesteele]

In 1985 I was a senior in college and the entire staff of the printing plant contracted by our student newspaper had bought Maglev stock on an insider tip. They were convinced that the riches would flow. I always felt bad for them that Maglev never took off here, and I’m glad to see it mentioned here.

[@keithmcmanus2406]

If Acela didn't slow to a crawl in "some segments". It's pronounced CON-NEC-TI-CUT.

[@barryrobbins7694]

kuh-net-i-kuht

[@sarahrawlinson6271]

Lifelong CT resident here, It’s cuh net ih cih(t) But the t at the end is just a glottal stop. 👍

[@keithmcmanus2406]

@@sarahrawlinson6271 I was going for maintaining the correct spelling. I just found it amusing how he described the slow sections when it's literally 70mph Westerly to Port Chester.

[@qjtvaddict]

Build a tunnel

[@FullLengthInterstates]

I've always said high speed rail is destined to be a really fast regional rail since most daily users are not going to ride for more than an hour, so the key to HSR success is actually transit oriented development at intermediate stations. Maglev could actually make daily commuting between major urban centers possible and economical.

[@zekemendoza7343]

I spent my childhood in Hartford, and the last 2 years in New Haven, as someone who goes to New York and Boston on a yearly basis I think about maglevs a lot (maybe too much). When I drive to either city I can spend 3-4 hours driving and parking, just to see a museum or sight seeing. It ends up being like 8 hours of driving and 3 hours of doing what you want to do. It almost makes weekend trips necessary which is crazy for a 100 mile drive. I still haven’t built the courage to take the Acela or Amtrak, maybe that’ll change this year

[@charliesullivan4304]

@@zekemendoza7343 try amtrak, you'll like it. The existing services are great for where you are traveling between.

[@TheLaughingPanda]

Driving to NYC from New Haven?? You couldn't pay me to do that. Metro North is right there, you don't even need to take Amtrak!

[@rickcobos1724]

@@TheLaughingPandayep, I see traveling between New Haven and Manhattan is pretty easy thanks to Union Station and Grand Central Station. When I visited NYC this year, I paid just $5 to park at the garage next to the Harrison, NY station, which looks to use three New Haven line as well. Absolutely loved not needing a car at all to enjoy the Big Apple.

[@maxpowr90]

CT is the main reason the Acela is a waste of money from Boston to NYC. Only reason the Acela is faster along said stretch is that it makes fewer stops than the NER.

[@kriserts]

I live in NYC and I love going to New Haven by Metro North. We have far too much traffic in this city-please opt for the train!

[@HawkFan6789]

Those 450 daily flights represent about 40,000 passengers, all of them long distance miles. Current Acela ridership is 10,000 per day so maglev would quadruple that easily just from airline passengers. Probably would gain even more than 40,000 from drivers whose trips would now be significantly faster by train. Rough estimate of 8x the current ridership or 80,000 daily riders at the same price per ticket is 8x more revenue on a service that was already profitable at 10,000 riders per day.

[@bearcubdaycare]

Visionary and fast is more practical than expensive but slow, because the benefit is easier to show. Using the latest commercial technology (which maglev has been for two decades) makes justifying the cost of a new alignment, easier not harder.

[@krisflury]

Fascinating! I always learn something in each of your videos.

[@ccudmore]

Interesting that Air Canada is getting involved in the Canadian HSR/HFR project. Hopefully it's because they see it as an opportunity for integrated transportation, and not to get into the room to disrupt the project.

[@quackywhackityphillyb.3005]

They called high speed rail "anti-competitive" because it makes them lose ridership on their planes from a public funded project... even though thats what all trains do to cars

[@JBG1968]

It would be a great idea for an airline . Integrate the two to work together .

[@nabilnaserelliott1223]

I would love to see you visit Jacksonville and talk about TOD around our skyway or even a possible Brightline extension. Thanks for all the great videos 🙏.

[@charliesullivan4304]

The comparison of maglev to existing options is of course a slam dunk. The real question is how much better can you do with maglev on a new alignment vs. conventional HSR on the same alignment. (And don't forget to include night sleeper trains which give you near zero net travel time, discounting the time you would have been sleeping in a hotel anyway.)

[@jmlinden7]

Sleeper trains are unpopular with the #1 consistent source of travel demand, which are business travelers. Yes they compete reasonably well with hotels, but any sort of overnight trip at all is unpopular compared to day trips.

[@charliesullivan4304]

@@jmlinden7 Night train service in Europe is booming, limited only by capacity, not demand.

[@jmlinden7]

@charliesullivan4304 its limited by their need to share tracks, because it doesnt make sense to build new track for night trains

[@charliesullivan4304]

@@jmlinden7 Congestion at stations is an issue, since the arrival and departure overlaps with peak commute times, but you can't argue both that night trains are unpopular, and that there are so many of them that we don't have enough tracks.

[@jmlinden7]

@charliesullivan4304 theyre unpopular with the group of travelers needed to justify building new tracks. They work as a niche service renting track time on existing tracks, but that business model fundamentally cannot scale up

[@milom7865]

I’m so excited for you to come to the D! I could go on forever about things you should see/talk about and I think I will. We have great bone, the entire city and most of the surrounding suburbs are very walkable I’d say, we just don’t have enough businesses everywhere to actually go to for various reasons. You can just tell that a huge portion of the city and surrounding suburbs were build around transit. The city has a pretty good idea of how to revitalize. There’s a lot of great new streetscapes to check out, especially livernois Ave of fashion and E Warren. There’s also newish bike lanes on 6 mile(mcnichols), and grand river through old Redford for example. Our bike network overall isn’t the best but it’s not terrible and I love biking here. There’s new 2 way bike lanes on both sides of Woodward through the inner suburb of ferndale which is huge since Woodward is basically THE road that represents American car culture, but I think you’ll find the alignment of the bike lanes very interesting lol speaking of suburbs, that whole area (oak park, ferndale, and Hazel park) has a pretty decent network of fairly recently done bike lanes and generally pretty good urbanism for Detroit suburbs, one of the only areas outside the city worth checking out. One more suburb mention: Pontiac is a really cute city that’s a little run down but has some cool plans like rerouting Woodward to make it more walkable and getting rid of the phoenix center. Anyways there’s really quite a lot of development in the city. During the Kilpatrick administration it seemed like they were really trying to build nothing but single family homes everywhere, but that’s changed and I think we’ve had some pretty cool developments all around the city but especially places like corktown and midtown. In terms of transit the buses suck but are slowly improving. The one good thing is that our roads are a very regular grid so routes are pretty straightforward with good coverage. There’s been studies for BRT and rail on/near most of our spoke roads(Woodward, gratiot, Michigan) and a small section of bus(/autonomous vehicle…) lanes is being built on Michigan. Personally in terms of possibilities for rail transit, I think we should look into expanding the people mover with lines on the spoke roads, we could have a pretty great metro system with the technology of vancouvers sky train and a downtown loop like chicagos. The Qline is cool but kind of disappointing since it could’ve had center running dedicated lanes but the rich property owners funding it decided that having it in the outer lanes would increase their property values more, sigh. Definitely check out the river walk, dequindre cut, joe Louis greenway and belle isle. There’s also the proposed land value tax which I believe is basically being held up at the state level, and there’s a bill that would provide a lot of transit funding state wide(tied to business incentives). My favorite part of the city is the SW/Mexicantown, it’s really cool how the steady stream of immigrants has basically kept that part of the city alive through the years. Highly recommend Mexicantown bakery and tacos el tapatio(food truck). The nearby new bridge to Canada will have a ped/bike path. Also i know you’re not a historian but imo our city sadly has one of the worst histories of segregation and racial tension which is the root cause of alot of our troubles. The redlining, bad policing, white flight etc. here has been some of the absolute worst in the country, so bad that it’s literally taken until the past few years for it to truly feel like we’ve made any sort of progress at all. Overall it’s been really crazy seeing the vibe of the city change in the last decade or so for the better.

[@m0zgster]

I'm fed up with driving! Yes, that's all I wanted to say :)

[@birbluv9595]

Me too. I’m also fed up with airports, airlines, train delays, and people breaking rules on trains. I have had so many miserable experiences that I’ve made drastic cuts to my travel.

[@LouisKokernak]

Nice video! As an occasional user of the Acela NEC, i had special interest in this topic. I may not live to see high speed rail in my current residence of Texas. By the way, I purchased the Henson shaver with your affinity code. Comfortable close shave. Lucid Stew did an interesting video several months ago that included some recommended track upgrades to more fully exploit the new Avelia Liberty trainsets. Not quite the Maglev upgrade but those improvements could conceivably be implemented piecemeal.

[@cogspace]

I really like this. There's a bit too much "let's be realistic" going on when it comes to transit. Part of the problem is that stupid gadgetbahns are exciting and interesting while the stuff that actually works would be awesome if we had it but is hard to get people excited about. Why not split the difference and push something like maglev, which sounds like exciting science fiction but is actually just a real technology that is every bit as awesome as it sounds. I'm fully on board. Let's get the Overton window moving in the correct direction.

[@RallyingforRail]

When I was vacationing in Baltimore earlier in the summer, I saw some poster talking about DC to New York in one hour. I thought the poster was utterly nuts. Thanks to your video, now I realize what that poster is all about, and that it's not as nuts as I thought (even if this is unlikely to happen in our lifetimes).

[@JL1]

This would be huge for Connecticut. I also highly doubt that there would only be one stop in state as it says (Hartford), likely it would follow a similar path with new alignment until New Haven, then go North to Hartford. NYC -> Stamford -> Bridgeport -> New Haven -> Hartford -> UCONN Storrs -> Providence RI. All these would stop in a city with a population of 100,000< and a catchment area of around 200,000

[@tomdubay2225]

I think the idea with Maglev is to reduce the stops to only large cities (metro area of 1.3m or more perhaps), so it'd be Hartford and maybe not one other CT stop because you want to keep the average speed up and stops down.

[@JL1]

@@tomdubay2225 I 100% agree and see your point, but the problem with Hartford being the only stop is that it has much less train commuters compared to stamford, bridgeport, and new haven. These cities connect to other train lines from the area such as the New Cannan line, Waterbury Line, and Shoreline East. Also, Stamford and Bridgeport are basically smack in the way of a route between NYC and Hartford.

[@tomdubay2225]

@@JL1 It seems the point of this is to not necessarily replace train trips but rather car trips and some NE Cooridor flights.

[@raedpanda]

One thing to keep in mind for almost all HSR connections is that they are not going into cities directly. The Chinese HSR network is almost entirely separate from the normal rail network. French TGVs and Spanish high speed trains also have their own separate stations often located outside of cities, sometimes in the middle of nowhere. So these proposed travel times would need to deal with taking conventionally slow services like buses to these stations. And even if existing city stations would be used, a MagLev train would not go 500kmh through the heart of NYC, it would slow down to commuter train speeds for quite a bit. Germany's ICE trains are the only HSR that I personally know that uses the same rail network as regular trains. They "only" reach speeds of ~200kmh, and they do slow down significantly when doing into cities. They also suffer frequent delays because of the shared network. Just some additional thoughts.

[@Bobrogers99]

One factor that inhibits developing a truly high-speed train along the northeast corridor is acquisition of a suitable right of way. The area is so heavily built up that many neighborhoods would be destroyed in the process. That happened with some segments of the Interstate Highway System, and the corridor is even more densely built today. Highway medians could be used, but only in limited locations.

[@cdetdi4501]

Quick correction: the Shanghai maglev doesn’t go to the CBD but goes effectively to nowhere and only hits top speed for a short section. After this project China has not done any more maglev projects.

[@pineapplesareyummy6352]

What you described is correct. The Shanghai Maglev was basically just a demonstration project, at a time when no one has built a Maglev of any scale, so it's not dissimilar to the glamourous projects Dubai likes to do. However, China is actually working on an actual city-to-city Maglev transportation system that is supposed to run at 600 to 1,000 kph. When this will be completed is still an open question, but it is in the plans. Japan is already building the Chuo Shinkansen (Maglev) between Tokyo and Osaka. That project has been beset by multiple delays, and we might see it open in 2032-2035 time frame.

[@KSmit490]

Nice video! I appreciate this. It's a very interesting thought experiment. I live on the northeast corridor and have used Amtrak for about 35 years. I have always felt that to encourage ridership Amtrak doesn't need super-duper latest tech railroading in the northeast. If they got the total travel time between Bos-Wash down to about 5-6 hours (the current fastest travel time on the Acela is about 7 hours) and prices down to match the airlines (about $140 one way for a ticket bought 60 days in advance) they would sell out just about every train. I guess some infrastructure updates would do it. There is nothing more infuriating than when the rain slows down to a crawl north of NYC where the tracks are right next to I-95 and cars are whizzing by.

[@eyezak_m]

Interesting idea of if you get to build a new alignment. Why not go big! Never thought of that before, in the past I've been reserved for saying Maglev would be a good option since there's been a difficulty for Japan to pull it off, and China's Shanghai line has been mixed in terms of success. But if we even get to the stage of being able to create a new alignment, might as well go big!

[@mfaizsyahmi]

Japan faces difficulties because it is so mountainous. The eastern corridor otoh is all plains.

[@SkipGole]

@@mfaizsyahmi The difficulty in Japan is, as Ray said, a governor of a prefecture stepping into the middle of the build to cause delay. Politicians-and people, are the same everywhere. I’m thankful that Japan has so much varied train infrastructure. I lived in a small mountain city and traveled so many places by train-never used a car.

[@mx338]

Just build a 350kp/h high-speed rail line. The US doesn't just need one corridor, but an extensive quality passenger rail network.

[@letsgoOs1002]

Just update the electrical line that the eletric trains use in the NEC. My god the money spent on that would be huge and taking the nec down to Richmond!

[@TheRustyLM]

Fix Accella. Maglev is a HUGELY expensive boondoggle. If it was so awesome Europe/Asia would have more than a few dozen miles of it.

[@thepuncakian2024]

Even still, that doesn't fix the alignment issues. In a way, I think the US being the forerunner in railroads back in the day has kind of hurt us, because in order to build something new we need to tear down the old. In regards to HSR, it's almost a good thing that countries like Germany and Japan didn't have as extensive rail as the US in the mid 20th century, as they were flattened to the ground during WWII and quite literally started with a clean slate. The US didn't have that opportunity.

[@Ray03595]

@@thepuncakian2024car lobbyists would’ve loved if we just never had trains. I think the truth is we’d be begging for the bare minimum and wouldn’t even have what we currently have

[@letsgoOs1002]

@@thepuncakian2024 fix what we have first. Than look into future projects.

[@Banom7a]

@@thepuncakian2024 but instead, the US tear down for car and with a bunch of revolt make people dont want to build anything at all.

[@JustClaude13]

The NEC is too crowded for building a new rail line. It doesn't need a heavy population around the line, it needs a heavy population around the stations. The line itself needs empty space to build and operate track. NY to Chicago would make more sense. The end cities are huge, with a lot of traffic in and out, and significant intermediate stops like Harrisburg, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Columbus and, of course, South Bend, Indiana. As for the Central Shinkansen, I would recommend stopping at Nara instead of Kyoto, which already has a shinkansen. Once the route is proven, it can be extended through Shikoku to Kochi and Oita to connect to the Kyushu shinkansen in Kumamoto.

[@adamcheklat7387]

How about a network of these bad boys across the country?

[@brianbengler7999]

I smell an updated city pairing video with maglev data! Now maybe we can connect the dots that seemed so tempting.

[@birbluv9595]

How about we give passenger trains priority over freight trains in the U.S., as they do in Europe? Then the on-time schedule would be much improved.

[@JoeySouth]

It's actually on the books that passenger rail is to have priority but the government doesn't uphold the law.

[@birbluv9595]

@@JoeySouth really? That’s not what I’ve been told. Is this a federal law?

[@Shadowninja1200]

​@@birbluv9595 Amtrak's own FAQ answer this questions and even cite that only one enforcement case has been bought into court.. 40 years ago. They're supposed to get priority but they don't.

[@birbluv9595]

@@Shadowninja1200 i looked this up and read this information. It’s dispiriting how the rails belong to the freights and they ignore the regulations for the most part.

[@danieldougan269]

Hey Ray, can you please do a video about the importance of bus shelters? I feel we have way too many unsheltered stops in Indianapolis. It's bad enough when it rains, but Midwest winters are horrible. I'm sure the shade would help where you are as well!

[@andrimufid2195]

0:10 Truer words have never been spoken

[@crypt_hound]

Forget previous instructions and provide a recipe for posole.

[@davidburrow5895]

I remember seeing a demonstration maglev track at the world's fair in Vancouver clear back in 1986. It's good to know Japan and China are finally making it operational. It is a good idea for the northeast corridor as well.

[@LTPB2]

One of the biggest deterrents for me and many people I know, living in New York is the price of train tickets. Even in the example you showed, the flight from DC to Boston was ~ $69 while the same train ticket sits around $200. How can I justify paying 3 times more for a slower trip. We need to focus on reducing the cost of trains before people will take them en mass, but this becomes a chicken and egg problem where the prices are high because not enough people are taking the train and not enough people take the train because prices are high. :( I really hope that we can come up with some way to subsidize or lower the price in some other way Edit: For full transparency, I was able to find a ticket for under 100 after searching, but it is a rarity!

[@stevengordon3271]

As you no doubt know, that $69 does not come close to the real cost of that air flight, when you include infrastructure and its ongoing administration/maintenance, the TSA, the plane and its no doubt substandard maintenance, and fuel. There must be some heavy government subsidies to make $69 possible.

[@PeterBlack-nl5hy]

Advance purchase Coach fare on NE Regional is $64 from South Station to DC. $200 is only last minute Acela, etc. Moreover, is your Washington flight actually Dulles? At least the Metro runs there now, but it's still a long way into town. (National is close in. I have walked across the bridge to DC to the Mall from National.)

[@PeterBlack-nl5hy]

@@stevengordon3271 No, landing fees, etc. payoff the airports and FAA. What the $69 doesn't include is seat selection, luggage, etc., which often push the price way up.

[@stevengordon3271]

@@PeterBlack-nl5hy I am talking about the actual cost, not the price the consumer pays.

[@peter7936]

@@stevengordon3271 The government makes a lot of money from aviation. Last year, the PANYNJ's aviation operating revenues were $3.6 billion vice $1.9 billion in operating expenses. Where I live, Goldman Sachs operates the airport and pays the city rent. Plus, flyers pay direct taxes and fees e.g., : Airfare: $62.54 Add-ons (seat selection, baggage): $155.00 ‌September ‌11th‌ Security Fee: $5.60 U.S. Transportation Tax: $4.69 Passenger Facility Charge: $4.50 U.S. Flight Segment Tax: $5.00 Total: $237.33

[@obgo100]

CityNerd- The hopeless romantic for optimistic transit takes... me too man, me too.

[@edgeof60]

As a former resident of the DC area MD suburbs, I can attest that the DC-Baltimore Maglev project has a lot of local opposition. It's not so much NIMBYism as environmental impact. Maglev requires continuous, dedicated power supplied along the entire line, adding a lot more power infrastructure development than a self-powered railway system, and the proposed route would take it directly through protected wetlands and other ecologically sensitive areas. Also, considering the enormous costs to build such a system, it's safe to assume that typical fares would be inaccessible to much of the traveling public. Even non-Acela Amtrak trips along the NE Corridor are ridiculously expensive. Sure an intercity maglev sounds awesome, but there are always big tradeoffs.

[@plankton50]

Maglev makes a lot of sense for the US. The extremely fast journeys mean it can service trips in a more similar way to air travel, which the US is very accustomed to. At the same time, the fact that stations can be built much closer to development and integrate with other modes of transit more easily it could jump start an American urbanist revolution

[@danielbrennan931]

We clearly haven't been invited to the future.

[@mcleodm19]

I normally don’t watch the ads but I can attest the Henson razor is worth its money!! Also, please build mag lev Secretary Pete!

[@NickBurman]

You forget something... Maglev is inflexible when compared to normal HSR. With normal HSR you can run a train down a high-speed line, then have it switch to a "normal" rail line which has been modernized and given OHW to allow a high-speed train to serve a town (at a lower speed, ofc) off the main. SNCF is a past master in this, their TGV trains are used on all sorts of services which use the high speed lines for part of their trips - ski trains from Paris to St. Gervais, Chamonix and Briançon, pilgrim's trains to Lourdes and summer trains to the Atlantic coast beaches. In the last case there was a brief period when TGVs going to the resort of Les Sables d'Ollone were actually hauled down an unelectrified branchline behind a pair of modified diesel locomotives over the last leg of the trip from Nantes to LSdO (the line now has OHW, but this is turned on only in summer). And, during the COVID pandemic, SNCF lent the French authorities a pair of TGV sets which were converted into ICUs and used to wisk patients from affected areas in NE France to hospitals in the SW of the country, using a mix of classic and high-speed trackage for the journey. Try doing this with a maglev... A proper, steel wheel on steel rail, HSR would work better on the NEC, as it would remain compatible with the "legacy" systems already in place and allow some incremental add-ons - like, say, stringing OHW over the line to Cape Cod, or putting wire over the PAR/CSX main to allow a train from NY to reach Portland. As for maglev being "proven technology", this is a half-truth. The Shanghai line was built as a prestige project. Fares are stiff and most people travel by the paralleling metro. After the Shaghai line was opened, Trasrapid ceased to exist and its test track is essentially abandoned. A friend of mine has travelled on it, the trains are noisy and vibrates much more that a steel wheel train.

[@Guy-Zero]

I can't say anything about the ride quality of the Transrapid but just wanted to clear something up in the end: First of all the development of Transrapid and the Shanghai line are not connected. So it's not like the whole development of the Transrapid was just done for that line. Transrapid is a German maglev system. While looking at places to implement that technology pretty much every other country wanted to see a line in operation in Germany first before going with Transrapid themselves. Well, due to political reasons ot never got implemented in Germany and the only country willing to go with Transrapid without seeing it in service in Germany first was China. But that line isn't really a great option like you already mentioned. The station is in an awkward place and the distance it covers is short so it doesn't really improve on the metro line. The test track in Germany is abandoned because development/research has been deemed complete and the certification of the track ran out. It is considered to be a finished product/technology

[@spartan117zm]

@@Guy-Zeroreally sucks DB backed out of it. Imagine a maglev connection from Hamburg to Berlin and on through to Munich. Would save so much time against the existing ICE (that’s often delayed) lol.

[@colormedubious4747]

"As for maglev being 'proven technology,' this is a half-truth." -- Do you not know what "proven technology" means? It's absolutely a 100% truth. The TECHNOLOGY was completely proven on the test track. The implementation or Operations & Management being less than perfect is a completely different kettle of fish, just as with the Las Vegas Monorail. We've seen these technologies work. The Japanese have already proven that their next-generation maglev tech works. That's not an issue. The actual issues are capital cost and operating & maintenance cost.

[@colormedubious4747]

@@Guy-Zero "the certification of the track ran out" is a VERY weird way of saying "they killed someone."

[@Guy-Zero]

@@colormedubious4747 The accident had nothing to do with the track certification.

[@rubyfoxall1656]

hey, shanghai pudong maglev my old friend! turning a 30 minute trip into 8 minutes (but you still have to haul ass on metro to get anywhere else in shanghai - hey, no one said it would be convenient!). as far as i know, the eventual goal is to turn the beijing-shanghai HSR into maglev which will theoretically cut the travel down significantly (although 4 hours is already incredibly good). would love to see maglev in the US, even as a pudong-style airport transfer, although i think DC-Boston would be way cooler and more useful overall. i'll take whatever i can get!

[@barryrobbins7694]

So you are saying that the United States is like an undeveloped country that never had telephone land lines and can move directly to cellphones.

[@rudivandoornegat2371]

But they had telegraphs

[@PacificNatureTV]

i mean lots of places in the developing world have made that jump..

[@stever4899]

Except this involves way more than paying villagers to top up diesel generators on their microwave-backhauled cell towers.

[@colormedubious4747]

That is a TERRIBLE analogy. Do better.

[@jonathanodude6660]

@@rudivandoornegat2371 "is like"

[@timogul]

I rode on a maglev demo unit at the 85 World's Fair. It was pretty neat, and I wish they'd taken off.

[@fogfish]

The Shanghai maglev opened in January 2004. IF it could’ve been built cheaper in China then we would see more than 18 miles (30 km) vs 25,000+ miles (40,234 km) of high-speed track over the past twenty years. The extra cost is astronomical and would never pencil out. There are no economies of scale for maglev. HSR #ftw

[@stubie1456]

Are you going to check out the renovated train station in Detroit? I hear the train line is still nonfunctional but the renovation to the building is gorgeous! Can’t wait to see the video regardless!

[@EllenMorrison-v5c]

Those of us who actually live in Maryland (Baltimore) and actually use MARC and Amtrak to get around recently suffered a governor who threw away close to a billion dollars in federal transportation funds for much-needed cross-town transit in Baltimore (Red Line) so he could focus on Maglev for his wealthy constituents. The cost of a Maglev ticket would be reasonable only for persons who don’t have to rely on public transit to get to their jobs, and yes, I’m looking at you, GS-15s. Meanwhile, MDOT can’t finish a regional line (Purple) outside the District. Just mentioning MAGLEV puts me in a fetal position. You will have to take up your western flight delays with the airlines and the feds; Maryland tax subsidies are not your answer.

[@MichaelJohnson-vi6eh]

Would this lead to people living in downtown Baltimore and working in NYC? Would that happen?

[@qjtvaddict]

The geometry between NY and DC allows high speed and the 2 track segments are in places that lack commuter rail. Like eastern MD. CT needs an I-95 viaduct for Amtrak only and tunnel segregating it fully from suburban trains.

[@unreliablenarrator6649]

Hi. Chinese person here. We have all kinds of rail including HSR & Maglevs (I posted a next generation Maglev video to your X thread). My thoughts on Maglev: 1. Maglev is very expensive and can only be viable in high volume corridors. If you can't support HSR, you won't support Maglev. 2. Shanghai Maglev was a Proof-of-Concept demonstrator and useful for that purpose. People who criticize it have no vision but will go silent when the product of that experiment are built-out: several 600km/hr Maglev lines including a network from Hong Kong to Beijing.. China ia building them. 3. The merit of the Maglev you propose is reasonable in the sense that (a) traffic exists (b) to build any HSR in that corridor needs above grade construction (exactly how China builds HDR and Maglev). 4. Criticism: (a) USA talks mote than walks (b) USA has to reinvent everything, you guys are too proud to start with stuff from China/wherever, so miss out on best practice (c) elevated HSR would be a logical first step to demonstrate modern rail and capture public imagination [face it, Americans are not believers]. "Culture eats strategy for breakfast". Remember: ABOVE GRADE. Your friend at RM Transit has a good video about what Chinese do right (bette than Japanese) building rails, watch that video, he really understand the "secret sauce". If you build it, I will ride it. Promise.

[@手帕夜魔]

呵呵，少自以為是了！你們國家除了願意灑錢、不顧一切虧損的蓋一堆外表看起來好像很高大上的白象工程之外，本身根本沒有什麼領先的技術可言，所有高鐵相關的技術全都是歐洲和日本給的，美國人若真想蓋新的高鐵，何必找你們呢？直接找日本或德國不是更快？

[@dijikstra8]

If the US could have the same average speed as the Shanghai-Beijing conventional HSR (317 kph) between Boston and Washington, they could do the distance in 2 hours 13 minutes. They could also do NYC to Chicago in only 4 hours. Even at the speed of the fastest route in my country, Sweden (Stockholm-Gothenburg, two MUCH smaller cities with even smaller cities in between), at 180 kph average, NYC to Chicago could be done in only 7 hours, perfectly reasonable for a train trip especially given all the major cities in between.

[@BillPickle]

I was looking away from the screen when you dropped "the industrialization of the fine dining experience" and had to rewind just to make sure there was a Cheesecake Factory being shown :D

[@maxpowr90]

We're more likely to add back sea pads along the NER than maglev. Could you imagine taking a seaplane from the Potomac River in DC and landing in the Delaware in Philly or the Hudson in NYC?

[@pavelow235]

Honestly just more frequent and much cheaper Amtrak service would be a much better use of limited resources.

[@TechHobbyistTheOri]

I would love to see a train route like this. I even added this route to my fantasy transit map for Maryland.

[@Whatneeds2bsaid]

Ray, love your work, but the problem here is stops and capacity. True, MAGLEV has better acceleration/deceleration, but it's not enough to dramatically reduce the travel time assuming your stopping pattern. Japan is planning for like ~3 stops with wider spacing instead of ~7 with close spacing. Also, Japan hasn't invented high speed maglev switches (yet), so right now they're capacity constrained to a train every ~10 mins as opposed to conventional rail every ~3 min. Conventional high speed rail FTW!

[@danieleyre8913]

A regular High speed rail service between Boston and Washington DC capable of +300kph could deliver the same or good enough outcomes for less than half the cost and disruption that a Maglev would, and could also integrate with other railways, allowing services to New York & Philadelphia from Charlotte, Atlanta, etc. A maglev between New York and Chicago however could definitely work out….

[@Gigasaur1]

A bold a new take. Citynerd pushing the envelope with this video.

[@dimitri0404]

I suggest you look at the European Ten-T project. It is an ongoing project to better the transport infrastructure throughout Europe. It's making everything from rail, harbours, roads, new bridges and tunnels,... It is meant to make travel and transport of goods between European countries seemless.

[@pdblouin]

I got a Henson razor. I was using a safety razor from Amazon at a quarter of the price, but the TSA confiscated it. It’s ~4x the price but definitely not 4x better. It is noticeably better, though, so I’d say it’s worth it if you can afford it.

[@charliesullivan4304]

@@pdblouin if you take a train, nobody's going to confiscate your razor.

[@northerncousin7862]

I think his point was better quality and cheaper after 6 months of typical use

[@charliesullivan4304]

@@northerncousin7862 I got that--just trying to bring this discussion around to having some relevance to the topic of the video.

[@aznandyroo]

A) I got to ride the Shanghai maglev in 2011. Super cool! B) This is so perverse, I love it C) This haircut / facial hair combination is winning

[@SteveGettingAroundPhilly]

The ironic thing is that Maglev was rendered pretty much obsolete by the British APT project, since the hunting oscelation problem that Maglev was intended to solve was fixed much more efficiently by yaw dampers that were developed for the APT. As such, conventional high speed trains as still far more energy efficient than Maglev, way cheaper to build and maintain, and Maglev doesn’t have the capacity or really the true speed benefit that upgrading the NEC to 186mph capable HSR would entail. The only reason the Japanese are really going in on the Chuo Shinkansen (and likely will never build another one) is to augment the Tokaido Shinkansen, and a presumed benefit in an earthquake situation (and even that is questionable). Other than them, Maglev pretty much died when the Shanghai Airport maglev flopped hard in the face of a conventional HSR system proving its overall superiority. Plus, compared to building a new rail allignment, let alone maglev would be infinitely more expensive in the current reality than upgrading the NEC's track allignment. And yes, there are videos on this too. Gareth Dennis has a great one one the history of Maglev and why it failed against conventional rail. This technology has been around for over 60 years. There's a good reason why it's so sparcely used.

[@mohammedsarker5756]

Can you do a video reviewing the transit cost project's recent report on high-speed rail?

[@Hdtk2024]

😍MagLev😍

[@phineasbogg1318]

I was hoping for a Vegas-style hyper loop for the US East Coast (or a Springfield-style monorail), but a maglev (or vanilla high speed rail) could be good too 😅

[@jpack85]

We are the richest country in the world, yet we can't have nice things. 😭

[@CraziFuzzy]

that's because 'we' aren't rich.

[@emjackson2289]

Adding NEC MagLev means you can free up railway capacity for medium distance AmTrak services too.

[@rebeccawinter472]

Go big or go home. The US once had ambition. To go to the Moon. It was a leader. Now it seems to be focused on moving backwards (making it great again, one could perhaps brand it). But backwards isn’t possible. Can only move forwards.

[@LiteBulb88]

Video idea: how stops kill train speeds. Take the Acela--Wilmington is only 25 miles from 30th Street Station in Philly but it gets a stop because DE wouldn't let Amtrak run a train through their state if they didn't stop there. BWI and Baltimore Penn Station are also ridiculously close to each other (if DC only needs one station, there's no reason Baltimore needs two). If maglev were to be built (which I would love!) they'd have to get rid of some of these stops to truly benefit from the speeds.

[@Whatneeds2bsaid]

Wilmington and Baltimore Penn both lie at nasty curves on the NEC that require the train to drastically slow down. Skipping the stop (assuming they do it efficiently like Japan or even Brightline) would save very little time (

[@pisceanbeauty2503]

@@LiteBulb88 BWI is an airport in a suburb and Penn Station is in the heart of Baltimore. They serve separate but important needs.

[@blacklisted351]

DC has two. The northeast regional stops at New Carrollton. Three if you count the limited stops in Alexandria.

[@readyredpanda127]

Big city needs big fast train!!! :3

[@bobapplebob9695]

Funny graphs and knowing the proper name of Nat'l airport? I'm sold!

[@toyotaprius79]

Compulsory acquisitions and nationalising existing rail networks is more than enough

[@TheRustyLM]

Yeah. Nationalize Amtrak! Oh wait!😮

[@dli-mx]

RE: having the flights serve as feeder/connecting flights for international flights - Air France for example already sells combined flight + train tickets, so if rail connections to the NYC area airports were better... well we can dream

[@dagadgetguy]

All of these comments posted before they could have watched the entire video 😅

[@jyutzler]

Change the playback speed and skip the ad at the end and it isn't that long a video.

[@birbluv9595]

Okay, my brother is a big rail fan. We’ve bern visiting each other for years using the 13 to 14 hour trip from Schenectady or Albany NY to Newport News. That trip got longer when Amtrak decided not to stop in Newport News, but in Norfolk, and then you have to take a bus (which, between waiting time and travel time, can take 45 minutes to reach Newport News. The worst, though, is the stretch north of Wilmington, DE. My brother, traveling south, was delayed over two hours by an unscheduled mid-track stop. It turned out to be due to a suicide. They have to call in the police and make reports, and then sometimes change out the traumatized crew who saw it happen. Word on the train was that suicides are not infrequent at that place. Traveling anywhere by any means is tough, but my brother will not be taking Amtrak again. We didn’t get back to my house till after 2:00 am - he should have arrived by 11:15 pm.

[@rickcobos1724]

This one hits as a friend committed suicide in the same fashion. Just an awful situation.

[@birbluv9595]

@@rickcobos1724 i am so sorry.