Let's Replace Planes with Bullet Trains! The 10 Busiest Short-Hop Air Routes In the United States

This week we're looking at the busiest air routes that SHOULD be high speed rail, if the United States could figure out how to build it. These are the most-trafficked origin and destination city (really, combined statistical area) pairs in the US under 500 miles.
It's a distance we REALLY shouldn't have planes flying between large markets. Every other advanced nation has basically figured this out already, and we're still building narrow gauge tunnels for personal vehicles. It all makes perfect sense.
Video explores California High Speed Rail, the Texas Central, the Acela / Amtrak Northeast Corridor, potential Brightline extensions to Las Vegas and Atlanta, and touched on possibilities in Toronto, Montreal, Mexico City, and Guadalajara as well.
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Twitter: @nerd4cities
Instagram: @nerd4cities
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Previous CityNerd Videos Referenced:
- Improving Acela: • U.S. High Speed Rail: ...
- Regional Rail: • Regional Rail Systems ...
- The Port Authority and the XBL: • What a Tunnel Should D...
- Canada HSR Race: • High Speed Rail vs. Ai...
- Mexico HSR Race: • High Speed Rail vs. Ca...
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Resources:
- www.transtats.bts.gov/Tables....%FLQOEO%FM&QO_fu146_anzr=b4vtv0%FDn0q%FDQr56v0n6v10%FDf748rB
- www.texascentral.com/ridership/
- www.frankfurt-airport.com/en/...
- www.lek.com/insights/ei/high-...
- northatlanticrail.org/travel-...
- www.gobrightline.com/brightli...
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Images
- NY Airport Video by Viktor_Laszlo from Pixabay
- Korean high speed train Video by Train_Video from Pixabay
- Model planes thumbnail Image by Günther Simmermacher from Pixabay
- Bullet trains thumbnail Image by Katherine_Lawrence from Pixabay
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Music:
CityNerd background: Caipirinha in Hawaii by Carmen María and Edu Espinal (KZbin music library)
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Inquiries: [e-mail]

[@AaronSmith-sx4ez]

Using city pairs is actually an "airline centric" way of viewing train travel. Airplanes need 45-90 minutes for turn-around plus ~23 minutes (x2) for taxi times. Train turn-around times are remarkably faster...for some stations it can be as low as five minutes. With this in mind, you don't need to view train routes as pairs, but rather as series or webs. Take the west coast. Say you had a HSR route for SD > LA > Fresno > SF > Sacramento > Portland > Seattle > Vancouver. Those going from SD to Portland can share the route with those going from LA to SF. But if you tried to fly from SD to Portland with stops at the inbetween cities, passengers would revolt. HSR with low turnaround times can utilize shared routes and experience hidden efficiencies and surprise advantages over air travel.

[@lizcademy4809]

Earlier this year I went through a phase of watching Japanese travel videos. This is exactly how their bullet trains work - they make a few stops at around 5-10 minutes each, then keep going. In addition to skipping turnaround and taxiing time, the train does not need to wait for everyone to be seated, seatbelts fastened, safety video played, etc. before the train can move. It's fairly easy to walk on a moving train.

[@91djdj]

Exactly my thought! Take a look at Chinas HSR. Highly subsidized and with a huge politcal push but going from Beijing to Shenzhen works totally fine. Like whats wrong connecting the Bay Area with the Pacific Northwest and to Texas all the way to Florida? You´re right, its a network, not single lines.

[@rudinah8547]

You make great points about turnaround times etc but the city pair perspective seems more a passenger based mentality, no? As a traveler I only think about travel as A->B

[@michaelkalus7802]

@@91djdj In general public transit isn't understood in North America. They always look at point to point solution. A new line gets put in when there is a need to move people between two points instead of building a grid. I tried explaining this to people repeatedly, it just does not compute. I blame this on the car centric thinking, because people in general only consider the point where they are, to where they want to go and expect to do this in ONE vehicle. Ironically enough, long distance trains could provide exactly that, but because it makes stops along the way they don't think it's a viable option. Again, planes. You fly from point A to point B, then you go out and if point B isn't your final destination you get onto a different plane to point C and so forth. It still is really annoying me how public transit planning in North America continues to be done that way and then they wonder why people don't take public transit. In any European city I can crisscross a city in multiple ways, by multiple modes of transport and people do it all the time. In North America, even in "good" systems I am lucky if I can find one viable route that gets me to my destination.

[@AaronSmith-sx4ez]

@@rudinah8547 My point is more so toward infrastructure utilization than consumer satisfaction. One train can transport both SD > Portland travelers AND LA > SF travelers at the SAME time. Airplanes can't do this because they take too long to turn-around. This means demand/utilization for these trains can be quite high, which in turn makes them economically viable. Sure say Portland to SF isn't viable...but as part of a larger west coast chain, it can be for rail routes. This also means HSR could do periodic "milk-runs" to even smaller communities and still be viable as large as the greater network is larger enough, and the "milk-runs" don't compete with the bread-and-butter "express routes".

[@eamonnca1]

I often hear talk about “aMeRiCa’s tOo bIg fOr hI sPeEd rAiL.” Didn’t stop them building an actual grid of interstate highways coast-to-coast and border-to-border/gulf. I’d safely say the majority of people using those highways don’t use them for their full length. It’s the intermediate journeys that most people make that just happen to be along those routes. The interstate system didn’t look at city pairs and connect them, they just went ahead and connected the entire nation because enough influential people decided it was the right thing to do. If the same were to happen with rail we’d be in a very different place.

[@kalui96]

In the early days of this country, people took great national pride and advantage in coast-to-coast rail... making "America Great Again" should include having coast-to-coast rail so good that society doesn't use such regressive arguments- just because we can! Wasn't that the underlying theme of Manifest Destiny? Connecting the East to the West? Come on America we can do it again surely. What if we phrased it as "we should build more rail than our enemies like China just to flex on them"? Would that get their support?

[@CarterHancock]

The reason we have highways for cars is because much of America is extremely empty. Unless you have rail connecting every tiny American town, or close to it, personal transportation is a must. I'm not saying we SHOULDN'T have HSR, but that is the simple reason why we don't. Oh, and airplanes. Which are faster for trips longer than roughly 300-400 miles. HSR works great in ultra-dense Japan, but to go from coast to coast, which are the biggest air routes, it would take AGES on HSR. HSR would be great in a DC to Boston corridor (connecting the big cities in between of course)

[@eamonnca1]

@@CarterHancock If planes are better for long hauls, then why do we have coast-to-coast highways? Also, most American cities (at least major ones that have some remnants of an urban core) are still walkable in the area around where a HSR station would go. I don't see why you'd need HSR connecting every single town. That'd be absurd. Not even the freeway network is that comprehensive.

[@JonMartinYXD]

There were multiple motivations for the Interstate system. Chief among them is right in the official name: Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways. In 1919 the US Army did an experiment to see how long it would take a logistics convoy (ie. trucks) to travel from Washington DC to San Francisco on the Lincoln Highway. The Lincoln Highway was just six years old but the journey took sixty-two days. With the convoy was a young lieutenant colonel Dwight Eisenhower. So already by 1922 a proper national highway system, considered necessary for national defence, was being considered. The idea bounced around for a bit but then the depression and WW2 happened. While in Germany, Supreme Allied Commander Eisenhower saw the Autobahn and the die was basically cast. When Eisenhower became president he ordered the Army to come up with a plan for a national highway system.

[@drwalka10]

Won’t be done without displacing millions of mostly vulnerable people, who are mostly black and brown people ? It’s gotta go thru somewhere and u know it won’t be thru affluent Neighborhoods

[@jwt1035]

Wishing you a HSR (High Speed Recovery)!

[@clayton97330]

Favorite time of the week. The biggest advantage of trains is avoiding airport security. The Eurostar is an exception because you have to go through customs.

[@jan-lukas]

But it crosses the European border, so that's expected

[@lj2265]

This. People are like "Yeah but I can take an hour flight instead of a 3 hour train ride" but all that time you save just gets spent standing in line and going through security and waiting around to board the plane and then (especially these days) wait for the plane to actually take off lmao Which actually still counts as time spent travelling so no time was actually saved

[@clayton97330]

@@jan-lukas For sure. I liked showing up to the platform 5 minutes before the TGV departure time, hopping on and away you go. Bring your luggage with you, no waiting for checked luggage. Stretch your legs in the seating.

[@Zestrayswede]

@@jan-lukas *It goes between a Schengen member and a non-Schengen member

[@CowWithBeef]

If we are recommending public policy, drop the airport security and save time and money.

[@robertcartwright4374]

Get better soon!

[@benmasi2483]

As someone who’s made the LA to San Fran trip a few times, I am very much considering taking the 6 extra hours of travel time instead of driving next time. California has some of the worst middle-of-nowhere traffic I’ve ever seen because of the lack of trains.

[@lizcademy4809]

20 years ago, when my kids were little, we had one set of grandparents in San Diego and one set in L.A. (Encino). We lived on the East Coast, so a visit to grandparents involved flying to one of the cities, staying with that family (and sharing their car), taking the train to the other city and doing the same, then flying home. The train was quiet, wit great views, and great for young kids. We drove the distance a couple of times, it was very little shorter and Not Fun. We never even thought of flying. This was before Security Theater, by the way, back when cross country flights served full meals, plus snacks.

[@yunleung2631]

CAHSR is still being built

[@agntdrake]

Or at least they could bring back the over night train with sleeper cars. I feel like that would be amazing.

[@CityNerd]

Every time I've done that drive I can't believe how much traffic there is in the middle of nowhere. It's nuts.

[@chaos386]

That’s what frustrates me the most about CAHSR naysayers. The SF-LA route is already bursting at the seams with the existing highway and airport infrastructure (I remember flying SFO->LAX and it took half an hour to get from the gate to the runway because the taxiway was jammed with plane traffic!), and HSR is still cheaper than widening I-5 enough to add an equivalent amount of capacity.

[@cardenasr.2898]

I think your inclusion of Tijuana in the California High Speed rail influence area is spot on, there's already so much commuter traffic clogging up the entry ports, a rail connection across the border is already necessary. There is a proposal to build an elevated railway from Rosarito to Tijuana, hopefully politicians will be productive for once, and consider a border connection. Mexico City to Guadalajara would work on the long run but even a shorter route to Querétaro would be a lifesaver for commuters and tourists, the México-Querétaro highway can get awfully congested

[@TheElizondo88]

It doesn't even need to cross into Tijuana itself. If you have a final station at Otay Mesa right by the CBX crossing, that means that you could take HSR from SF or Vegas to TIJ Airport directly and hop into a domestic flight anywhere in Mexico. This would likely bring a ton of air traffic to TIJ, which has no room to expand but that is an issue for another day.

[@CityNerd]

Would love to take rail to Tijuana and Rosarito. How about an Ensenada extension...I'll go just for the ceviche tostadas

[@1981menso]

@@CityNerd Oh man you have good taste in food as well as being snarky. I think I have a man crush on you now.

[@pepsdeps]

@@CityNerd California has the demand and connection for its own HSR network, but its mexican counterpart makes sense only if it is connected up to the Californian network. There already are cruise ships from LA to Ensenada.

[@lukenorman7364]

Not sure if you've followed it at all, but the Massachusetts Democratic nominee for governor (all but guaranteed to be elected) has voiced her support for an East-West high speed rail in the state that connects Pittsfield and Springfield to Boston. As a resident of Western Mass, I'm hopeful for the future of rail travel in MA and hate that taking the Mass Pike to Boston is the only efficient way to get into the city from the western part of the state.

[@97nelsn]

It’ll be a bit of a fight since the CEO of Peter Pan Lines opposes any form of high speed rail since it’ll compete with their route between Springfield and Boston and has fought for years to derail any plans for high speed rail in Western Mass.

[@brianjonker510]

From there it would be easy to connect to Albany.

[@jasonreed7522]

This is part if my dream route of Boston to Buffalo with all the logical stops, combine it with a NYC-Montreal HSR line and the Northeast will basically never need to expand its highways. And yes the mass pike sucks, its great to have a highway but sucks to have only a highway with insane congestion near the city.

[@nlpnt]

@@brianjonker510 And the NYC-Albany Amtrak service has recently been extended to Burlington, VT. It's awaiting Customs preclearance facilities so the route can be extended further to Montreal where it would link with VIA Rail's line to Toronto by way of Ottawa.

[@tonywalters7298]

@@97nelsn that is the problem in the US is that we do government and planning by lobbyists and lawyers. Southwest Airlines got their start by doing frequent flights in the texas triangle and have lobbied against high speed rail as it would cut into their business. Then you also have the ooh-shiny peoople who think autonomous cars will be the solution to traffic congestion

[@jlpack62]

Brightline's service from Miami to Orlando will be interesting to study over time. The two cities are in the sweet spot for distance and both are huge tourist draws for international travelers. It will be interesting to see how many international flight itineraries result in a side trip to the other destination by rail.

[@mitzy123]

If only it was electrified HSR instead of slow diesel trains. Brightline is such a huge missed opportunity.

[@ravibetzig7849]

I’m not that familiar with Orlando, how would one get from the proposed Brightline station (which I assume is downtown?) to Disney without a car? Is it most likely a rideshare situation? I did take Brightline from Fort Lauderdale to West Palm Beach in February and I was very impressed with it. The Siemens Venture coaches are really nice.

[@yunleung2631]

@@ravibetzig7849 I think there’s an extension. But to get to hotels you still need to get a car. Orlando is an infra wasteland.

[@neckenwiler]

@@mitzy123 they're sharing most of the ROW with a freight railroad. I doubt it would've been easy or cheap to add catenary. They built a damn good project with a very low budget, and now we're seeing absolutely fantastic intercity service. In a universe without financial constraints or negotiations with FL East Coast Railway, sure, electrification would've been the way, but Brightline has to live in the world they were given, and they've done a great job. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.

[@scoobiusmaximus9508]

So I live in south Florida and have taken the Brightline a few times, to all 3 of the currently open stops: West Palm Beach, Ft. Lauderdale, and Miami. I would say it has its pros and cons, but I feel like overall it was set up in some ways that really hamper it. Specifically I have 2 main arguments. The first is that it isn't really as modern as it could be despite being brand new. It's not electrified, it's not really all that fast, and basically every crossing is at grade which is part of why it has such a high death toll compared to any other high speed (by North American standards) rail. It is still faster to get between those cities than the highway because it avoids the traffic, especially the traffic around Miami which is terrible, but not enough that I would choose to pay the ticket price vs the price of gas generally, especially because for most trips I would need a car on the other end anyways. This leads into the second and IMO larger issue. The big issue is the infrastructure around the stations. They have free parking in parking garages for Brightline riders, which is pretty much necessary if they want to have anyone ride it. That's good for their business and I would say still better for cities and the environment than having people drive those cars the whole way between West Palm and Miami, but the necessity of cars at your destination will remain a hinderance to people actually using it for the commute. The West Palm station is by far the best placed imo as it's downtown on one of the most walkable streets in the city (Clematis for anyone who knows the area) with what is some of the better public transit in the area, and notably is a short walk from the Amtrak and Tri-Rail station although I doubt many people are making train-train connections but the area is served decently by busses. You could conceivably be headed to a destination in that area and not absolutely need a car, especially if you want to go to a bar or nightclub. The Miami station is certainly in the city, I can't say quite how walkable it is or how well positioned because I have only been there once and I immediately got an Uber to my actual destination. It did look like it at least has a bus stop, idk how great the Miami bus lines are, so maybe that's passable but the area around the station certainly didn't look like there was all that much to walk to nearby. The real travesty was the Ft. Lauderdale station though, that area is absolutely desolate if you're walking. There is a McDonalds nearby I guess, if you don't mind the complete lack of a sidewalk between the destinations... and that's about it. Walking from that station to an actual destination was pretty unpleasant and I have just taken an uber on the other occasions I have been there. They really need to integrate the Miami and especially Ft. Lauderdale stations into the surrounding city (including somehow making it not an urban wasteland and having actual destinations nearby) and make sure that people can actually use their service in both the starting and destination cities without just needing a car anyways to make it actually thrive.

[@sammyrice1182]

There used to be ultra low-speed rail service between Guadaljara and Mexico City. I took it around 1994. There was also service between Mexicali and Guadalajara, but both were shut down. My comment is off topic, and the truth is, as you say, the US, Mexico and Canada are just so behind in transit and rail. I wish us a great transit and rail awakening and you a speedy recovery. Keep up the great work!

[@jmac3327]

Bus service, some of it luxury, replaced the rail service that ran at an astronomical deficit.

[@AlexCab_49]

Mexico is miles ahead of the US in mass transit, trust me go to any city that isn't on the Northeast, Chicago or San Francisco and you'll see what I mean

[@thomasgrabkowski8283]

@@AlexCab_49 Because much lower percentage of Mexicans have cars compared to Americans

[@AlexCab_49]

@@thomasgrabkowski8283 That is true and what keeps the numbers down is the high cost of owning a car and driving in Mexico compared to the US.

[@thomasgrabkowski8283]

@@AlexCab_49 Also Mexican incomes being far lower than US

[@Westlander857]

I wish we had high speed rail in Phoenix, and I could even see it being a hub for HSR if it ever comes to fruition. LA, San Diego, Palm Springs, Tucson, Las Vegas, El Paso, and Albuquerque are all within feasible HSR distance of here. Some of it would involve tunneling or building around mountains, but that’s nothing that countries with good HSR haven’t done already.

[@loganbrown8282]

nah man, lets not incentivize living in hell

[@bonne_vie]

The ecological effects of these railways being built is something I'm interested in someone commenting on. I worry about wildlife, natural monuments, and people's houses.

[@drwalka10]

Won’t be done without displacing millions of mostly vulnerable people, who are mostly black and brown people ? It’s gotta go thru somewhere and u know it won’t be thru affluent Neighborhoods

[@cumsoak]

Aint nobody getting on a train to Albuquerque

[@bruhbutwhytho2301]

@@drwalka10 bruh why are you commenting this everywhere? There are already lots of places that could be used in these cities for hsr

[@gosudoyourself]

Wishing you a speedy recovery!

[@freudsigmund72]

For me, driving on the highway, and getting passed by for the very first time by a 350 km/hr (217 m/hr) train going to the same destination parallel to the highway was a real eye opener that it truly is a good alternative between major urban centers.

[@sandal_thong8631]

That's certainly good advertising. I think the orange line on the DC Metro had the same advantage: people in cars stuck in traffic could see it pass. The downside is that they say stations being in the center of (or along) the highway don't increase development as strongly as if it was underground or could have buildings next door.

[@freudsigmund72]

@@sandal_thong8631 it's not a single fix is the solution to every development problem. But first class public transport is an important partial fix.

[@lyndakorner2383]

One of the amazing aspects to the analysis of travel demand in California is that southern California's Inland Empire, alone, has four and a half million residents, and, yet, thinking only in terms of city pairs, as Brightline and others have done, pretty much ignores this fact. The population of the Inland Empire is larger than that of any of half of the states in the U.S.

[@cogspace]

Having recently relocated from the golden state to the silver state, I really, really hope Brightline West works out. Would be amazing to be able to visit my friends and family in LA without having to risk my life on I-15 every time.

[@1981menso]

Last time I drove from SD to LV was 2004, I was going 90 mph and getting past on the 15.

[@KannikCat]

Fancy meeting you here... ;) On topic, having driven to LA a handful of times from SJ, the road trip shenanigans (going from 101 to 5 by going around a dam on a two lane road) would make an HSR option with good end-point connectivity very much desired, triply so if it can connect to all the network points noted in the video. :)

[@DavisSorenson]

The Bureau of Transportation Statistics is the only BTS I stan

[@davids7799]

Hope you're better immediately.

[@blackest3314]

As a non-US, I remember watching an episode of the big bang theory where they decided to travel by train from pasadena to san francisco because one of the characters is afraid of flying and the journey is like 10 hours or something similar. I was like, that can't be right...oh boy, little did I know.

[@stanwbaker]

Worth noting that is a seven hour, 400 mile drive or (with theater overhead) four hours by air.

[@blackest3314]

@@stanwbaker thanks for the info :D Still kinda ridicolous...also I hope four hours by air is all included (security, trip to the airport, waiting time), otherwise that would be a sloooow plane...

[@topherinwi63]

I took a train from Los Angeles to San Diego. It was wonderful but it was not fast

[@blackest3314]

@@topherinwi63 I wish to travel more by train. Years ago I went to Japan and I traveled all over the place with HSR, just amazing :D

[@topherinwi63]

@@blackest3314 whenever I travel around I usually make a point of doing some train traveling. There are some amazing train routes in the United States. They are not fast but they're scenic

[@ThreeRunHomer]

Taking a train to New York has a big advantage: it takes you straight to Manhattan. If you fly, you have the awful experience of getting from one of the airports to Manhattan.

[@MrAmbrooks]

Building good train service from JFK/LGA/EWR to Manhattan is prob far easier than a new high speed rail service from any city to Manhattan.

[@jasonreed7522]

@@MrAmbrooks not necessarily, i assume that airport-Manhattan needs a new corridor vs just upgrading the existing corridors out of the city. (I think after Acela the next most important HSR line for NYC would be a connector to Montreal via Albany (and either Burlington or Plattsburgh, but Plattsburgh removes VT as a stakeholder which streamlines the process) I guess the question is if its cheaper to build a very expensive per mile project for a short distance or to build a cheap per mile project for a long distance. (Need actual numbers to know for sure)

[@yuriydee]

@@MrAmbrooks You would think that and yet here we are..... From EWR its fine for the most part, but from JFK its a long journey. Either A train to city or the monorail to Jamaica and transfer to LIRR. Then for LGA the N train extension just keeps getting blocked by NIMBYs.

[@burby_geek]

not really a problem for most new yorkers since only around 15% of them live in manhattan and it's usually faster to get to one of the airports

[@ThreeRunHomer]

@@burby_geek original comment was about “taking a train TO New York”. Perhaps surprisingly, most people who travel to New York don’t live there.

[@maleahlock]

One of my favourite things about trains is that they don't have to wait for fog. This is lovely because riding a train in the fog with a hot cuppa is a beautiful experience.

[@thomasgrabkowski8283]

And the. fact that trains are affected far less in general than planes by weather conditions

[@RichardGreen422]

I would be very happy with just an Acela quality train from LA-SD (too close for air travel). I commuted for six months from DC to Philly on the Acela/NE Regional, and it was more than fine (and yes, I know this wouldn't replace air travel, but it sure would help).

[@renaes2807]

Amtrak's Pacific Surfliner is a decent alternative with a 3 hour one way trip, but I certainly wouldn't say no to a faster train for my SDCC trips 😂

[@jasonreed7522]

I think the fact that NYC didn't dominate this list shows that even the Acela at 69mph avg from Boston to DC can put a dent in airtravel. (Considering that Acela links it to most of its nearby big/important cities)

[@letitiajeavons6333]

I know of Congresspeople from Philadelphia who take the Acela to D.C. and back. Californians who want an Acela style train between San Diego or L.A. and San Francisco should bug their Congress critters. Especially While Nancy Pelosi and Kamala Harris are in positions to have influence over this.

[@RichardGreen422]

@@renaes2807 When I have time, I use that, but alas even in traffic, auto travel is usually considerably faster. The single track section really slows in down (and it takes jjust one freight train to cause the Surfliner to be late). But an 85 mph train with limited stops and priority would dominate the automobile.

[@mikeydude750]

@@RichardGreen422 Problem is no local transit worth a damn. CA HSR won't be great if you need to rent a car at either end because local transit isn't adequate, and BART and LA Metro aren't remotely adequate.

[@camerongodbehere17]

As a fellow nerd for things like city planning and population demographics I can’t help but chuckle at all of the little reasonings and explanations and how thorough you are when coming up with these lists. This is the content we need!

[@endarior]

"Gaze upon this madness" is my new favourite CityNerd sass talk

[@JDubyax2]

CAHSR keeps chugging along. You can see its ROW and viaducts on aerials now

[@ficus3929]

I honestly believe they’re going to finish it. I don’t know when that will be but I’m starting to think it could be in my life time. We have so much travel between north and south we need this to reduce emissions!

[@thunder____]

I wish you a speedy recovery and I admire the dedication it must take to make a video while you're sick with COVID.

[@JustClaude13]

"I don't think I've been to Italy at all . . ." What are the chances that you've toured Rome but just forgot? If you're running trains from LA to Phoenix, you have to continue to Tucson. It's only another 100 miles and the level of traffic on the I-10 is insane. The weakness of this analysis, interesting as it is, is that it treats rail as a low running airline, where everyone gets on at one end, then gets off at the other. Trains have the advantage of being able to stop in "mid-flight" to drop off and pick up more passengers.

[@jimbo1637]

Video suggestion: I'd love to see a "top 10 walkable small towns" or something along those lines. Big cities dominate urbanism discourse and I think it's important to remember "good urbanism" is not synonymous with "major city."

[@mayam9575]

I would love that. I like in New England and there are so many cute little towns that have such great down towns

[@CarterHancock]

One thing I've noticed about a lot of small midwestern towns in the US is that they are small enough that the entire town can be crossed in a half hour, some just lack the infrastructure (bike lanes, well-maintained sidewalks) that I'm sure many still take cars

[@kalui96]

Simply for environmental reasons, rail travel should be encouraged. The sweet bonus attached is the time saved, for sleeping, reading, writing, etc, and leisure of not having to drive.

[@christophermiller867]

We're bad at it because we've spent the last 50 years making sure we were bad at it.

[@lukasmashuda3934]

Awesome channel man,

[@BlaxKid22]

You're posting the work that goes into planning, very different than other KZbin planners who just post their opinions. This is refreshing, thank you.

[@cagedtigersteve]

I hope you get better. Stay safe. Thanks for posting.

[@mattvaandering]

can we all reflect for a minute on how transformative it would be, culturally speaking, if there were high speed passenger trains that linked canada, usa and mexico?

[@dirtycommie2877]

Vancouver all the way down to Tijuana would be interesting.

[@feyelsbells7839]

i wonder whether the opposition would bring that up, but in a negative tone...i could see that happening

[@mostlyguesses8385]

Haha, what a boring idea, "take a train to see Canada , Winnipeg from Chicago! Or on vacation leave NY for Toronto"" . . . . Why would a voter support a train to a tourist location they might visit once maybe, that's the opposite of likely to get support..... Build subways, skip these fast trains people ll use once a decade on vacation.... I love trains but know they are dumb now we invented airplanes which take 3 hours not 1.... So much mental energy trying to push trains, which even in Europe basically took over the intercity bus routes didn't replace the airplanes, people on vacation ESPECIALLY want to get there fast not waste vacation time..... I could be wrong, just seems train lovers ignore logic...

[@saxmanb777]

As an airline pilot, I want all these built really bad, even though I’ve enjoyed operating countless flights between Chicago and Milwaukee, and DFW and Austin.

[@orangeadventure975]

People seriously flew between Dallas and Austin? That's so insanely wasteful.

[@saxmanb777]

@@orangeadventure975 there are flights every hour or more between Dallas and Austin. They are full too. But 90% of those people are connecting in Dallas, a huge hub, to another city.

[@frankmarchio8865]

My team AC Milan featured! Finally the San Siro, I was waiting for this

[@JBthePAdashC]

Love the dedication! Thanks for an episode despite COVID. Feel better soon

[@BobQuigley]

Easiest dumbest route Cleveland to Chicago. Boring, flat, easy. Took existing antique line several years ago. Wrong in every way. Slow, too many stops, uncomfortable, stinky, expensive. Cleveland to Chicago and back is extremely common. Somehow planes dominate in spite of Chicago's notorious airport weather problems. Train goes right into downtown Chicago blocks from Michigan Ave. High speed rail would be glorious

[@avismith9386]

Stopping in Detroit. Detroit to chicago would be huge

[@danbert8]

@@avismith9386 Would probably make more sense to have the high speed line go from Pittsbugh to Chicago with stops in Cleveland, Sandusky (during Cedar Point Season), Toledo (short connection to Detroit), and Chicago. A similar high speed corridor from Cleveland to Columbus to Cincinnati would probably also make sense. Of course only Chicago actually has a real public transit network out of those cities...

[@dwc1964]

IIRC, RM Transit did a pretty thorough examination of different options for a potential Great Lakes passenger rail network

[@devynclaybrooks5338]

I’ve driven to Chicago 3 times from Cleveland, and flown back to Cleveland from Chicago. What I would give for a 2-3 hour train ride where I get to just sit and look out the window

[@sandal_thong8631]

This video is looking at city-to-city not a network, so it's kind of flawed. Even most airlines use hub-to-spokes with only a few point-to-point. This rating cuts out pretty much every Midwest high-speed rail route, except that Dallas to Houston route. If we want to cut down or nearly eliminate flights under 300 miles, then we'll just have to go city-to-city at either high-speed rail 100+ mph, or bullet rail 200+mph.

[@geospacedout]

Toronto to Montreal was served by a HSR all the way back in the 1960s, designed by UAC, the CN and later Via Rail TurboTrain could hit 220kph. Sadly, CN had no incentive to upgrade their tracks so the numerous at-grade crossings forced the trains to be regulated to 105kph, a speed too low for the gas turbines to operate efficiently. It was an engineering success let down by regulation and government obliviousness.

[@knarf_on_a_bike]

I rode the Turbo several times. Beautiful train, very comfortable, even on existing infrastructure. There were a few places where they "opened it up" (whether legal or not, who knows?) around Belleville - Trenton. We were near the 401 and we were going considerably faster than cars. Great bar, too, up in the front "dome", right behind the engineers.

[@rosskgilmour]

Ah the Canadian trifecta a novel innovation killed by quasi government sponsored monopoly and terrible regulations. Oh canada indeed

[@jonatamaniuk]

@@knarf_on_a_bike that would have been amazing to get to ride the Turbo. I’m still waiting for them to get their act together and at least put in a dedicated passenger rail link between Toronto, Ottawa, and Montreal with stops only in major cities or something similar to this. I have loved taking the via rail trains in recent years between Toronto and Ottawa but there are always delays, keeping them from being on time.

[@puffapuffarice]

OMG! I LOVED the TURBO Train! I rode it twice in high school. We have lost count here in Canada on the number of reports commissioned & not acted upon to improve rail. The present PM Trudeau's Dad floated a plan to do away with level crossings in corridors (BC, Alberta, Ontario & Quebec) in the 1970's! One can drive over some of the abandoned rail corridors that this paid for in may locations. Sadly not many between YYC & YUL or YYC & YEG.

[@sergior.]

Listen to this man, Americans! Greetings from Spain

[@NicholasBhagasinsan]

Get well soon Mr. City Nerd👍

[@AlRoderick]

Your hypothetical Chicago to DC connection would pass through Toledo, which would be a logical place for a branch line that goes north to Detroit and continues on to Toronto. It could be called the ToTo line.

[@neolithictransitrevolution427]

That would probably provide connection to Chicago and any Midwest network

[@jrochest4642]

Wishing that KZbin allowed GIFs, because that post cries out for the "joke rimshot" Gif.

[@mono2go]

I have been traveling between the bay area and LA in the past year and it's nuts how much plane tickets can cost. Even a few weeks out SFO/SJC - LAX can readily go for almost $200 one way during peak times. In an effort to save some dough, I always take a late night flight. The drive is awful and to avoid traffic I end up driving at night often. I took the Coast Starlight twice. It's beautiful but my god it's slow. They should have electrify the San Joaquins and extend it to LA (currently an 8 hr trip with a bus from Bakersfield to LA, still 2 hr faster than the coast route), then build HSR on the 5 corridor. That way central valley still get decent rail service and LA to SF gets a truly high-speed connection.

[@mikesteinkrauss9773]

Well don't make the mistake of assuming the train will be less expensive than flights. As someone who patronizes the best route in the US, Northeast Corridor all the time, it is extremely expensive compared to planes normally. If you are able to book a month in advance the prices are reasonable, but if you find out on Monday you need to go to DC on Wednesday, it is likely it will be a good bit more expensive on the train, especially Acela And building any High speed rail even for short haul will likely be billions of dollars. Ticket prices will not be inexpensive

[@mono2go]

@@mikesteinkrauss9773 for sure, which shows that there's so much demand for last minute travel here and now modes will be helpful (like on the NEC). I guess my point was that people, esp business travelers, will climb over each other to take the HSR over flying.

[@lyndakorner2383]

You can get some pretty amazing fares ($39 round-trip) from Breeze Airways for service between San Francisco International Airport and San Bernardino International Airport. Metrolink will also soon reintroduce 60-minute express trains between San Bernardino and Los Angeles, so the overall travel time from SFO to downtown L.A. could be two and a half hours. And, California High-Speed Rail is supposed to connect Los Angeles and San Bernardino in just under 30 minutes.

[@mono2go]

@@lyndakorner2383 That's great to hear. I used to live in the Inland Empire and have many memories with that Metrolink line :D

[@filipbujaroski9221]

Awesome work, thank you

[@DustinEvans1966]

I didn’t go back to my condo for one year in China. Right outside my window. They built a 30 line rail station in under a year. The platform stretched as far as you could see in the waiting area above the tracks. But whats interesting. Is two cities I drove between quite frequently…. Hangzhou and Wenzhou. To drive my Toyota Corolla. I would spend around 200 euros each way. And take seven hours. While on the train it was 2 hours and 30 euros.

[@thomasgrabkowski8283]

That said, pretty much all Chinese highways have tolls and they're very expensive. Domestic airlines in China are also shockingly bad in terms of punctuality and reliability. I guess chinese government made it to make people use the train

[@DustinEvans1966]

@@thomasgrabkowski8283 yes it feels it’s engineered like that. Some routes the flights still make sense. Especially if going east and west between certain cities. But north and south say Shanghai to Hong Kong. If you take the direct train. It’s actually faster on the train.

[@VaioletteWestover]

@@thomasgrabkowski8283 Well from my experience, High Speed Rail is legitimately just a superior form of transport for China over all alternatives except for ultra long distances over 1000 miles. People in China literally live 200 miles away from where they work and just transit into the train station and then sit in luxury and comfort for an hour and get taken into a station that is vertically connected to the taxi/bus/subway station that takes you to within 500 meters of any location in a given city. This is not possible with car or airplane travel and opens the country to just much more possibilities but it requires a comprehensive nation wide public transit system like in China. Any time I go to China for business, I do NOT want to ever sit in a plane ever again honestly.

[@TheTrainWatch]

Glad to see ATL-ORL making the list. I could see that being ORL-Ocala-GainesvilleFL-Macon-ATL. Those intermediate cities have small airports with bad service. A lot of people just drive to Orlando or Atlanta anyway, which adds a couple hours on the plane trip side.

[@sdorn]

Phoenician here (okay, Tempe) -- yes, absolutely this makes sense.

[@Koopzilla24]

T.F. Green being attached to Greater Boston kinda makes sense because a lot of people use it here for cheaper flights than Logan, especially to Florida. And the Airport is connected directly to Boston via Commuter Rail

[@woodalexander]

The connection to the T is rather useless as the headways are huge south of Providence.

[@simondunham9998]

Thank you for all the hard work you do to bring us these incredible videos!

[@FunkBison]

In your high speed raid video on extending the Acela corridor down to Atlanta, you considered expanding it westward to Montreal, Toronto, and Detroit/Chicago. As a Great Lakes native who lived on the east coast for a long time, I'd be really interesting in a video discussing how this region pencils out. I recall Chicago to Toronto being a relatively strong route in your Chicago video, and Pittsburgh to DC doing reasonably well in your first ever video. So I'd be curious how the network effects work here.

[@jonatamaniuk]

I’d have thought anything connnecting New York and/or Chicago to Toronto would have been mentioned. Multiple multiple flights per day from two separate airports in Toronto. Right now I’m aware the biggest issue with New York-Toronto linking would be the rail bridge over the Welland Canal which prioritizes ships over rail traffic (part of why even GO transit has trouble reliably expanding its rail operations to Niagara Falls). The Chicago-Toronto route… I’m not sure what the issues would be other than a border crossing and probably a stop in both Detroit and Windsor.

[@freyak5401]

Great video as always. Love this channel. Hope your recovery goes well

[@TimothyHalkowski]

Excellent analysis.

[@Zach-xv5pq]

In South Africa we have a coastal city (Durban) to which thousands drive from our capital (most populous area) for summer vacation. 500km/6hr drive. Every summer so many die in fatal crashes and many more can not afford to fly back and forth. I dream of a highspeed train between the two cities. Durban's port is massive so obviously there's tons of cargo trucks going between the cities (good shipping container trains(?) would also be great). China has proposed to help fund this potential train, but theres a lot of scary possibilities behind that. What I'm trying to say is the people with me in the car whenever I make this trip are so tired of hearing me talk about trains, so now I foist it onto you. :)

[@robertcartwright4374]

Foist away, buddy. Nothing is more sympathetically listened to here than complaints about the irrational scarcity of train service.

[@Luboman411]

​@@robertcartwright4374 But South Africa is a relatively poor nation, so it makes sense that it simply lacks the funds to build high-speed rail. It cost tens of billions to get that off the ground. But the U.S. doesn't have this excuse. It has the money to get this done. Oodles and oodles of money. But that money is either misused in our incredibly wasteful health care system or it's sucked up by the Pentagon. And there is no political will to 1) divert these funds to high speed rail, and 2) to get the high speed rail actually built.

[@sek153]

back in the 1970s there was an experimental high speed rail between Pretoria & Johannesberg. The flat head locomotive was attached with an aerodynamic nose cone & modified bogies, managed to reach 245km/hr on 1067mm gauge, pretty fast for a narrow gauge train back in the 70s

[@Luboman411]

@@sek153 What happened to that experiment? Was it completely funded by the SA government? Who were the international consultants on that? Considering it's the 1970s, the only nations with enough engineers with lots of experience in HSR were Japan and France. And the apartheid embargo had not hit yet, right?

[@sek153]

@@Luboman411 i am afraid i do not have the answer for all of them. But here is the wikipedia link describing the experiment for your reference. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MetroBlitz

[@grahamturner2640]

With Phoenix, I wonder why you didn’t include Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport (IATA code: AZA), which is in the valley, but further out and only served by budget airlines.

[@rangersmith4652]

When I lived in Belgium, if I bought an Air France ticket from Brussels to Paris then on to the US, the Brussels to Paris leg was on a bullet train. It makes a lot of sense to use a fast train for "former" air routes of less than 45-60 minutes in the air. Two US city "pairs" that make sense in my experience: Norfolk/Alexandria/DC and Boston/Hyannis/Providence.

[@Grateful.knits99]

So happy for a video because this is my hinge prompt.

[@matthewbarba3166]

This video really shows the high speed rail potential in California and it's connections to Las Vegas and Phoenix. Like you mentioned with the LA to Sacramento Pair, the gravity model you normally use isn't always accurate, and using existing traffic is probably more useful in that regard. CASHR, Brightline West, and a future LA to Phoenix connection would take so many planes from the air it would forever change the industry

[@PASH3227]

LA to Phoenix would change how LA’s regional airports work. It would reduce a significant amount of trips and give people flights to more distant destinations, most likely more flight to Washington State and Hawaii.

[@roadrunner6224]

Less Miniatur Wunderland? You just made an enemy sir!

[@ilyakogan]

This video is so important!

[@wta1518]

7:30 As a Sacramentan this made me laugh. A lot of people drive to LA which is not only bad because they're driving, but they're also going to LA.

[@Marylandbrony]

Can you do the most Urbanist universities that also play at the Power 5 level of College football and turn that into a confernce? It would be intresting to see.

[@DEHCFI]

Regarding your question on ATL-MCO about how much of the data set is continuing DL pax, the answer is zero. The data is originating/departing and not transfer so it most likely only captures itineraries beginning in ATL and ending in MCO. Hope that helps!

[@1anonymousb]

I always joked that an LA (along with SD and SF) to Vegas line would pay for itself in a few months. It probably be best to make those cabins easy to clean.

[@reinaldobenitez2042]

New city nerd dropped 🔥

[@BillKing3456]

One other thought is it may be way more practical to start high speed rail further out from the center of a city/metro region. Land costs are prohibitively much higher in urban areas and where rail corridors do exist, there is considerably more community opposition to a high speed train roaring behind peoples' back yards. Using the NYC-Pittsburgh case study as an example, the point where trains could go 200-300 mph would almost certainly only be way out towards the edge of the urban ring or even past it. For NYC that would be in western New Jersey or even eastern Pennsylvania. You could take a commuter train (or drive/uber) to the start point of high speed rail and then zoom on a straight shot through tunnels and across unpopulated valleys to the perimeter of the Pittsburgh area. A lot of out-of-work miners would be happy to help bore through the Alleghenies. As California is exhibiting, it's way easier to build HSR out in the Central Valley than in either the LA or Bay Areas. I wonder whether, in Europe, it was easier to upgrade to HSR because it was the next step up from an already extensive amount of rail infrastructure everywhere. Also, upgrading again and again (at considerable expense) to get marginally higher HSR on the Northeast Corridor just doesn't get me as excited as (re)connecting city pairs in a more comprehensive away across the country. Btw, I think ridership on HSR in Europe, which has gotten expensive, has lost market share to low cost airlines and also Flixbus. I don't know if the same is true in China and Japan. As a fellow transportation planner/engineer (with a regular job) I understand your frustration and how youtube at least gives you an 'outlet' - TG for youtube and keep up the good work.

[@michaeld5458]

I guess it’s just a population thing, but I’m always surprised Houston-Austin isn’t the bigger Texas pair. I live in Houston and never hear people talk about traveling to Dallas. But I swear everyone here goes to Austin like once a month to drink, visit friends, or go to festivals/concerts

[@kneonspace410]

conventional trains are actually pretty good at competing with busses, because they have all the same disadvantages of not driving yourself but less of the upsides that rail has, the only reason that they compete well is because the us heavily subsidizes the highways and often rail service doesn't exist or has to cope with freight rail induced delays and lack of service

[@davidpierce3217]

Hope you feel better soon! Rest and hydrate!!

[@brokeafengineerwannabe2071]

I understand this video is a rough estimate, but I think you've left out some important factors when designing a successful high-speed rail network, especially one that can rival air routes. 1. Travel time, which includes the suburb to city centre connection time, is a better metric to measure compared to distance alone. One of the biggest advantages of HSR is that it enables passengers to get on and off at major stations right in the city centre, unlike that of airports where extra transportation is needed to get to the city. If there are rare cases in which the airport is built near the city centre, the travel time advantage of HSR quickly diminishes. Take the Tokyo to Hakata vs Tokyo to Hiroshima routes as an example. The two destination city is only 200km apart, yet the market share of Shinkansen vs air travel dominance disappeared in the former route. That's because Hiroshima airport is located very far away from the city, while Fukuoka airport is only kilometres away from Fukuoka city centre. So there is not much time lost for air travel passengers. 2. To maximise passenger rides, HSR routes should not only consider the potential users from the two connected cities but also the passing stations that they can serve. Some of the most profitable HSR routes pass through the biggest cities in their countries. The Beijing-Shanghai route also passes through Tianjin and Nanjing, and Tokaido Shinkansen passes through Nagoya and Kyoto too. The best HSR route in the US that can benefit from this is probably the northeast corridor, which is already a successful rail line. Most HSR passengers are originally regular rail users, so they should serve as the first runners.

[@ayushkrishnamoorti4685]

Hope you feel better! I was wondering if you could do a video on the best major interstate corridors (I5, I95, I10, I80, etc.) that would be best for high speed rail.

[@portostrengthunion]

My daughters both loved this video!

[@samkuzel]

Hope you recover soon Ray. Love this channel

[@paveladamek3502]

HSR of course has stops along the way between the termini. Also what the U.S. absolutely has to do is stop treating train stations like airports in terms of arrival at the station and "check-in" as if the train were a plane. In Europe you simply go all the way to the platform without any check and simply wait for the train to arrive, find your car and get in. I saw a documentary recently where people were waiting in lounges being a glass door for a train and went through security check. F that.

[@CityNerd]

100%

[@alexnishimoto8654]

You don't need to check in for Amtrak unless you're checking in baggage or you're on Amtrak's Auto Train.

[@nathanwinkler4169]

Please talk about how e-bikes are categorically different than regular bikes and should replace cars for most people etc...

[@qjtvaddict]

LEVs are as old as cars themselves actually

[@NiminaeOld]

You've done so much of their research for them--these states need to deliver!

[@willrobinson4976]

Sorry to hear about you having covid, hope all is well. I enjoyed the video, keep it up.

[@goattnder]

I love this video for pointing out all the places in California that rail makes sense, so we have some evidence to show people why we're spending all this money. Thank you! Also, "Inland Empire" is pronounced almost like IN-lind. Or you can call it the IE.

[@aebalc]

Why we are spending all this money? California's high speed rail project is an embarrassment of corruption and grift - a multi BILLION dollar project that every state agency and politically connected "consultant" is skimming money from. For what? Projected opening of a line from Merced to Bakersfield in 2029 at a cost of... Wait for it.... 119 Billion dollars!

[@ainahko16]

As a Texan, here are some cities I want Texas Central to setup routes to: -Austin (University of Texas, SXSW, and ACL) -San Antonio (Riverwalk, UTSA, and Six Flags Fiesta Texas) -College Station (Texas A & M) -Lubbock (Texas Tech)

[@jintsuubest9331]

Nah, gotta tear down more building to build more highway and parking lot.

[@ClementinesmWTF]

College Station will essentially be the halfway point of the first line if Texas Central can ever get running again after all their higher-ups quit (despite winning in the courts recently 🙃). Their station will be kinda halfway between CS and Huntsville for the two college towns to share. ATX and SATX would definitely be the next to be added to such a system as has always been the idea with the “Texas T-bone” and “Texas Triangle”. It’s uncertain how the system would expand from there, but most likely it would be north to OKC, east to NOLA, and probably south to Corpus/the Valley before they even try attempting the monumental connection west and northwest to El Paso, Midland/Odessa, Lubbock, and Amarillo

[@colormedubious4747]

Lubbock is a tough sell. It's too far from the triangle and its population is barely a quarter of a million people.

[@ainahko16]

@@colormedubious4747 I was thinking of putting HSR stations near major colleges in Texas so students who are from a different city in the state can visit their families on holidays without taking long road trips.

[@colormedubious4747]

@@ainahko16 That is not a significant market for HSR. You want to connect the major population centers first. In fact, the proposed station halfway between College Station and Huntsville is sheer idiocy - a false economy. They're basically condemning potential passengers in BOTH cities to a 25-mile drive to reach the train station. Utter stupidity. Just build it in College Station, the more populous of the two (and a town named after the train station that brought students to and from the school back in ye olden times).

[@abacef22]

You should do a video on automobile carrying trains and your thoughts on it and/or the economics of it

[@pacificostudios]

THANK YOU for putting out more information about why LA-SF should be prioritized over LA-SD. LA-SD service is already competitive with aviation, as the Surfliner takes a flat 3 hrs between LA and SD.

[@ovinelunacy]

As an urbanist who has been enmeshed in California HSR and, specifically, its environmental clearance, for more than a decade, would LOVE to hear any ideas/content on why this has been so damned hard.

[@barryrobbins7694]

@@OakIslandPictures Thank you for the comment. There must also be considerable pressure from airline companies. High speed rail in Italy contributed to a massive reduction of short flight travel within the country.

[@MartinHoeckerMartinez]

FWIW Metrolink (the Southern California Regional Rail Authority) owns the corridor from LA union Station to San Bernardino. Sadly it runs in the median of I-10 and is single tracked for a significant section (essentially LA to El Monte, with some passing loops) but east of there the right of way is amenable to double tracking. Since it's owned by the passenger operator electrification and higher speeds are viable for the LA to SBD leg. Getting a connection to Phoenix is rough because of the terrain east of the Coachella valley. RAILPAC has some proposals that utilize pre-existing (though abandoned) sections of rail right of way. There are some other gaps that need bridging to connect San Bernardino passenger rail to the freight rail right of way that runs parallel to I-10 to Palm Springs (then on to Yuma). I'm curious how (if) terrain is (can be) accounted for in (slightly) more complex models. Is there a middle ground between pop_1 * pop_2 / distance^2 and a full analysis of a specific proposal? Is there an easy to calculate a metric that gives useful comparisons or is it so route dependent that the cost in complexity for improved skill is too high? The approximate routes you drew seem consistent with what other folks who think about this have drawn. I am hoping for something more quantitative than a rule of thumb avoiding mountains, but I suspect that these are the kinds of details replete with devils. (Kudos for getting a video out while recovering, most impressive)

[@PASH3227]

Wait, could you send me some info on all this?

[@maxisenberg5580]

“Random arbitrary day”…selects my wedding day. Great vid as always!

[@mattrhodes3982]

Thanks! 👋✌

[@japanamericacar427]

as someone who lives in san diego, i would take all of the califronia routes, cahsr is going to take a while but well worth it

[@renaes2807]

I'm in South OC and very much looking forward to being able to hop on the CAHSR in Anaheim.

[@japanamericacar427]

@@renaes2807 for me what im hoping for is a electrification of the surfliner and some upgrades to the route, if they do that they could get la-sd down to say 1.5 hours, that would be a good stopgap while waiting for hsr

[@japanamericacar427]

Make it kind of simular to a mini-shinkansen system they have in japan, a small train that attaches to the main line

[@20quid]

Population density in the US is always used as an argument for why stuff can't get done, but if you were to separate the US into the East coast, West coast, and ignore the massive empty space in the middle, then the density argument starts to not make sense. And I think focussing on building two high speed rail networks first, and then once they have been shown to be a success moving on to deciding how to join them together, is a much better approach to demanding a nation-wide system right off the bat.

[@rishabhanand4973]

not to mention we had a much better public transportation system during a time when we weren't as densely populated

[@PASH3227]

Agreed. Amtrak should replace its long distance trips with buses and concentrate resources on high capacity high speed rail. People would complain about losing service but better service in the northeast and California would serve more PEOPLE, even if less PLACES were served.

[@spartan117zm]

I fully agree. The issue that generates is you get all the red states in the middle who will whine and complain about federal dollars being used for something they won’t benefit from, and thus those senators (again mostly red) won’t support any kind of bill from the federal government to help with these networks. Of course they likely wouldn’t support it even if it did cross their state… but I won’t get any further into politics here

[@gatewaysolo104]

Those damned midwesterners...

[@scottengel9965]

Set of the country isn’t empty. Chicago has 3 million people plus a metro area of 9 million. There are plenty of large cities like Minneapolis, St. Louis and Detroit in the center.

[@vanschaaykb]

I did the Toronto to Montreal route by train this summer. The train was full so certainly the demand is there. I check the GPS on my phone a few times durning the trip and we were typically cruising along between 120-140km/h, not exactly highspeed but consistently faster than by car, and way more enjoyable. The tracks seemed to be in much better shape once we crossed into Quebec. Fare wise it was reasonably affordable, less than it would cost me in gas to drive my truck round trip and cheaper than air.

[@Anonymous-sb9rr]

Two obvious corridors that cross the Canadian border: Portland - Seattle - Vancouver Chicago - Detroit - Toronto - Montreal Toronto - New York could also be a good one.

[@polywerden]

It bugs me when people use the excuse that the US is too large for efficient high-speed train travel. If there was the political will to accomplish it, we could also have trains here. We chose to invest in a federal highway system instead of a train system and this is where it's brought us

[@katbryce]

The answer is to look at regional high speed rail. Sure, New York to LA by train is going to be about as popular as London to Hong Kong. Some people will do it just because they can (or could before the problems in Russia started), but most will fly. But there are plenty of shorter air trips that could be replaced with rail.

[@Jeffhowardmeade]

Building a road is significantly cheaper than building a rail line, and anyone can use the road. Only the owner of a train can use the rail. The builder of a road doesn't need to invest in ultra-expensive rolling stock. The individual users all provide their own. Crashes on the road can be quickly moved out of the way, whereas a train pileup ties up that line for weeks, forcing a major reroute. Users of the road leave when they want and pause to eat and sleep when and where they want. A car can be sized according to the needs of the traveler, and stays put when not in use, but even an empty train still must leave the station on schedule.

[@MarioFanGamer659]

​@@Jeffhowardmeade There is nothing inherent about making rails only serve the owner. In fact, plenty of European coutries have liberated their network and allow for multiple (independent) operators on the same line (Spain and Italy are two famous examples) and those who hositate with it (e.g. SNCF) have to deal with lawsuits. And some of the advantages are moot with a large enough network (e.g. rerouting, though you do lose out some connections), false (train crashes are already rare on their own) while others are because of public transportation and are nothing inherent to trains (e.g. if I take a bus and become a road user, I can't leave the road on my own) and some of the downsides can even be an advantage (e.g. I can eat and sleep while moving at the same time which I can't do that if I were to drive a car).

[@Jeffhowardmeade]

@@MarioFanGamer659 I didn't write owner of the rail. I wrote owner of A TRAIN. Unless you are Elon Musk, you can't use a rail system. You go when the owner of the train wants to go, where he wants to go, and at the price he wants to charge. You stop when and where he wants to stop. If it's not economical to build a rail line to where you want to go, or if not enough people want to go there, you don't get to go... unless you have a car. Almost anyone can own a car, every developed country already has roads which go nearly everywhere, and upon which any car can be driven. I do enjoy an occasional train trip, and the train just happens to go to Staunton, Virginia, which is one of my favorite places in the world. I'm going to take a three-day train trip there next year, and bring lots of books to read on the way. But I can only do that because I'm retired and it doesn't matter how long I take to get there or back.

[@Brandon_and_the_argonauts]

Get well soon. I desperately want a Dallas-Houston-San Antonio system. The Texas triangle would is a great opportunity to implement high speed rail. The amount of private land in Texas is a very high hurdle to clear for such a project.

[@jasonge1]

High speed rail just makes so much sense, especially for the southwest and the northeast

[@rossplotkin3506]

Feel better!

[@jwpedroza]

Love the concept, but I am sure the airline industry has politicians pockets filled enough to kill any of these proposals. Let not forget the petrol industry as well.

[@Skzzlemister]

Yep, the airlines and oil companies hate competition. They have Americans by the balls and we all know it. smh

[@sblack53]

Best way to absolutely break the formula: put HSR stations at all the big international airports, use major corridors to connect these cities and the cities in between, and allow the international airlines (mostly the legacy carriers) to codeshare. Then the only flights that still need to exist are transcontinental and overseas flights, and a few connections to remote destinations.

[@scoobiusmaximus9508]

That does take away a major advantage of HSR though, in that airports generally need to be outside of a city, sometimes well outside of it, while trains can go to the city center easily.

[@sblack53]

@@scoobiusmaximus9508 I mean TGV has no issue stopping at CDG on the Paris-Brussels corridor. EWR already has a station that Acela could stop at. Schipol is literally a hub of the NL rail network. You can and should have both central and airport stations

[@MarioFanGamer659]

@@scoobiusmaximus9508 This problem is solved by adding an extra stop next (or even better, below) the airport. Sure, the whole journey takes a bit longer but it is a valuable compromise.

[@lyndakorner2383]

Airport integration is fine where it makes sense, but city centers are much more important.

[@lars7935]

@@lyndakorner2383You can do both you know?

[@joaonevesmusico]

I'm just an enthusiast, not an urban planner, but these videos are so interesting! Thanks!

[@CityNerd]

You got it!

[@markproulx1472]

Vancouver, BC - Seattle/Tacoma - Portland - San Francisco. Shoulda been built twenty years or more ago.

[@Nord_leuchte]

Interesting brief mention of Lufthansa Express Rail. You can check your bags shortly after g tetting off the train in Frankfurt which is certainly nice. I also do like the fact that your train journey counts as a connection flight. So in case your train is delayed and you miss your flight from Frankfurt, Lufthansa is responsible to book you on a later flight.

[@danielcarroll3358]

Before 9/11 I would check my bags in San Francisco and pick them up at the baggage carousel at the Cologne train station. And the Lufthansa lady would check my ticket on the train.

[@Skzzlemister]

Question: "I don't understand how it's 2022 and we're still so bad at this?" Answer: 'Merica. smh Linking SoCal with NoCal is such a no-brainer (and the link up to LV). C'mon Cali, make us proud and get that rail in! The Northeast from BOS to DC is also ripe for real high speed. This all should have been done decades ago. Better late than never though. Great list. Thanks for the awesome vids!

[@gatewaysolo104]

If it's a no brainer, why is LA to San Fransicsco years behind schedule and hundreds of millions over budget?

[@lyndakorner2383]

... because of people like yourself fighting the construction with lawsuits and preventing the Federal government from investing in high-speed rail. Doing so makes attracting private-sector investment difficult, delays completion, and makes everything much more expensive.

[@badllama4554]

Would be great to see a map of all the pairs you mention plus the edge ones. Looks like the beginning of a great network

[@whizzywoo582]

Hope you're feeling better Mr. Nerd :)

[@kenbrown2808]

if the US put high speed rail lines that paralleled interstate freeways and had a fast way to load and offload car trains, they could probably depopulate the freeways.