French Engineering

[Horn_Spanker 524]

I know, right.  The people that gave us Renault &  Peugeot.

But, I was in France earlier this month and zoomed around the country at 320 kph (198.839 mph).  Every American I met on the train asked, why can't we have this?

Why can't we have this?

 

[Parliament 14592]

I believe property rights in the US make it much tougher to get the rights of way to do such things.

[futureman 22691]

5 minutes ago, Horn_Spanker said:

Why can't we have this?

I think california has it figured out.  should be there soon. 

[Hawndoh 2409]

Because the USA is really freaking huge and our cities are far apart. 

France is the size of Texas and they have 40 million more people than Texas. 

Relatively short distances and much higher density means trains work well. 

 

[mdmost 43918]

We love our cars too much and switched to a system of highways over railways in the postwar era. The infrastructure cost alone now would be in the trillions range and air travel made rail a dinosaur over here. It's actually refreshing to me when you can go to an American city for a trip and not have to rent a car because they have a good rail system in the city. There are still some stretches that taking Amtrak is better than flying. We went to DC for the Maryland fiasco last fall and didn't rent a car. Walked or took the Metro everywhere. Finished the trip off with a 3 hour train ride to Philly to see the Cubs/Phillies game. Nice to not have to bother with airports or car rentals. In the Northeast, there's a decent rail network to get you to different cities. Just wish it was a little faster. 

Edited June 23, 2019 by mdmost

[Loco 3754]

10 minutes ago, Horn_Spanker said:

I know, right.  The people that gave us Renault &  Peugeot.

But, I was in France earlier this month and zoomed around the country at 320 kph (198.839 mph).  Every American I met on the train asked, why can't we have this?

Why can't we have this?

 

Politics.   Florida voted in a constitutional amendment for high-speed rail linking S Florida/Orlando/Tampa   The legislature flat out refused...no funding and every imaginable delay tactic till it died.  They had the land rights for all the corridors.  It just made too much sense

[tx 3 putt 78614]

DFW / HOU / SA / Austin / DFW - needs to happen in our lifetime 

[Chad Fuck 18130]

Because nobody copies the French, and the French don't copy nobody.

 

[YChang 3537]

DFW / HOU / SA / Austin / DFW - needs to happen in our lifetime 

Yes please.

[Pato del Muerto 53420]

Freight train right of ways are also a big problem with high speed passenger rail. 

[GreenspointTexas 9940]

Doesnt 80% of Texas’ population live within the Texas Triangle?

 

we need to make that triangle rail happen

[Post Oak 20554]

34 minutes ago, tx 3 putt said:

DFW / HOU / SA / Austin / DFW - needs to happen in our lifetime 

Better plan on living to 300. Avoid the Hey Steel Shank thread

[dingleberryswitzer 2724]

32 minutes ago, tx 3 putt said:

DFW / HOU / SA / Austin / DFW - needs to happen in our lifetime 

I'm guessing every Podunk town in between would whine and cry to get a stop put in.  You don't think this hypothetical train wouldn't stop in New Braunfels, San Marcos, Georgetown, Waco, Temple, Sealy, etc?  Shoot the aggys would whine their way to a college station stop.  The 3 hour ride from SA to DFW would take 5 hours.  And at five hours I can drive.

But the real reason is you also need a good public transportation system in so the big cities to.  A train to Houston is fine if I'm visiting Grandma and she can pick me up and drive me around, but if I'm going on a vacation and want to explore then I'd need my own wheels.  

[mdmost 43918]

That's where rideshare companies and short time rentals come into play. I mean most cities have downtown car rental agencies. I'm doing that in Chicago for our upcoming sports trip. Getting a car for a day to see a game at Notre Dame and then dropping the car back in downtown Chicago before using the subway to get to other places within town like the Cubs game. 

You could rent a car in downtown Austin or Houston if you took the rail to get there. You could do rideshare for other small trips. Or something like Zipcar. Hell, scooters might make this a non-factor in most urban cities. 

Edited June 23, 2019 by mdmost

[Huckleberry 34424]

Because the USA is really freaking huge and our cities are far apart. 
France is the size of Texas and they have 40 million more people than Texas. 
Relatively short distances and much higher density means trains work well. 
 

Exactly.

[Chad Fuck 18130]

49 minutes ago, tx 3 putt said:

DFW / HOU / SA / Austin / DFW - needs to happen in our lifetime 

To be fair, there are people working on it.

https://www.texascentral.com/project/

[bolverk 30307]

Southwest Airlines killed the Texas TGV (modeled after France) in the early 1990s when the plan was to link up the Triangle with high-speed rail. Now, they're less regional and aren't opposed but we still have the oil lobby and farmers/ranchers to contend with. Back in the 1940-50s, it was the car lobby that killed passenger rail in the US.

This thing appears to still be making incremental progress: https://www.texascentral.com/

The latest I've read: https://www.texastribune.org/2019/05/15/texas-bullet-train-avoids-possible-delays-after-budget-rider-dies/

Having lived in France and ridden the TGV, I dream of this becoming a reality someday.

Edited June 23, 2019 by bolverk
Chad beat me to it.

[gmr548 16684]

It's a loaded question with a lot of answers, some mentioned already. In no particular order:

 

1.) On a national scale, distance. Regional rail/HSR makes sense here but no train is making a trip across time zones quickly.

 

2.) On a local/regional scale, car-based sprawl is engrained in society, culture, and the economy. It may be the most inefficient, unhealthy, environmentally damaging transportation system that anyone could have ever hoped to design, and it may have been designed to facilitate racism, but people hate change. And there are a lot of monied interests that would prefer the status quo - airlines, fast food, truck stops, auto manufacturers, etc etc.

 

3.) Everywhere, property rights/markets. Obviously laws vary locally but these days just acquiring the real estate needed to build one of these is incredibly costly and drawn out.

 

4.) Political gridlock/corruption. Feds won't agree on funding or plans. When something does get approved locally or regionally, it reeks of cronyism.

 

5.) Kind of tied in with #2, but people don't know what they're missing. Most Americans don't travel. They've never experienced anything like that and are inherently skeptical of change. There's no pressure on leadership to make it happen.

 

America needs to re-work its urban design and it's transportation system. There are things we could borrow from Europe but people are also too quick to assume a copy/paste solution would get the job done.

 

Sent from my SM-G920V using Tapatalk

 

 

 

 

[phdhorn 6225]

Europe urbanized with the train in the 19th century, we urbanized with the automobile in the twentieth. simply put, they have the infrastructure that made it easy to upgrade, we don't.

However, I think there's going to be a time not too distant from now when the 300 mph automobile will emerge and the infrastructure will catch up to that prototypes are already being designed using cold fusion or electromagneticism.the rapid switch to electric vehicles is just the tip of the iceberg.

We'll be able to go as fast, but personally and not have to wait for schedules/group travel. Once again, we'll leapfrog what's existing now.  Hell the Autobahn has places where you're going just as fast and as safely. And that's kids stuff compared to what's coming.

[Dbeasy 15556]

We will have self driving high speed autos that travel on raised monorails from city to city that then can be driven on streets. It’ll take 25 years.

[Pato del Muerto 53420]

44 minutes ago, Huckleberry said:

Exactly.

So the trains terminate at the border?  You can’t take one from say Berlin to Prague to Vienna to Madrid to Paris?

[ryskey 449]

1 hour ago, Hawndoh said:

Because the USA is really freaking huge and our cities are far apart. 

France is the size of Texas and they have 40 million more people than Texas. 

Relatively short distances and much higher density means trains work well. 

 

The Texas Triangle has higher population density than France.  

[Huckleberry 34424]

So the trains terminate at the border?  You can’t take one from say Berlin to Prague to Vienna to Madrid to Paris?

Did France pay for the infrastructure in Germany, Czech Republic, Austria, and Spain?

Is the population density in Europe the same as in the central USA?

Did you think that question was good?

The Texas Triangle has higher population density than France.  

Yes, that's why Texas Triangle high speed rail makes sense but USA national high speed rail doesn't.

[SquishMitten 10494]

1 hour ago, tx 3 putt said:

DFW / HOU / SA / Austin / DFW - needs to happen in our lifetime 

Said it before, and I’ll say it again. Have all 4 cities go in together with an Olympic bid. Make high-speed rail part of the development. You can watch an event in Houston then an event in another city 30 minutes later. Single-city hosts lose money almost 100% of the time. This way, at worst, you split the loss 4 ways, but you still come out with substantial infrastructure improvements. 

[bolverk 30307]

2 minutes ago, Huckleberry said:

Did France pay for the infrastructure in Germany, Czech Republic, Austria, and Spain?

Is the population density in Europe the same as in the central USA?

Did you think that question was good? Yes, that's why Texas Triangle high speed rail makes sense but USA national high speed rail doesn't.

Yeah, a regional approach makes more sense in the US.

[Pato del Muerto 53420]

18 minutes ago, bolverk said:

Yeah, a regional approach makes more sense in the US.

And there it is. But you could still have service from some regions to others, even so much as all those west of the Rockies connected and all east of the Rockies connected, to at least one other region. 

And why would it only be federal funds that pay for it?  States and cities get to spend as well. 

[clapclapclap 9000]

2 hours ago, Loco said:

Politics.   Florida voted in a constitutional amendment for high-speed rail linking S Florida/Orlando/Tampa   The legislature flat out refused...no funding and every imaginable delay tactic till it died.  They had the land rights for all the corridors.  It just made too much sense

You left out a lot of the story.  The HSR fed funding only covered construction (partially) and the state would have been on the hook for all annual operating losses.  Because of the high price of construction to build  a completely sealed 186mph corridor (which at the time would have been barred by fed safety regulations from sharing any tracks with freight railroads or Tri-Rail) it likely would never have turned a profit.

Instead a private company that owns a freight railroad between Miami and Jacksonville is building a lower speed (up to 125mph) line between Miami and Orlando that will open in 2022, and then extend to Tampa 3 years later, originally named Brightline.  A much lower cost project because they can use their own existing rail line for most of the way (and the same in the media of an interstate from SW Orlando to Tampa that the prior HSR would have used) and won't have to build the very expensive grade separations and corridor modifications Mia-WPB the prior proposal would have had to build.

We'll see if the can operate profitably, but it is mostly privately financed and is now branded as Virgin Trains USA after their investment.  They're also building office, residential, and retail projects around their stations.  I don't recall the details of the original HSR proposal, did it directly serve the downtowns of WPB, FtL, and Miami?  Because Brightline does, and they're already running an hourly service (30 minutes during rush hours) between WPB and Miami.  No govt subsidy for that.  It will take a little longer to travel from Miami to Orlando/Tampa (about 3 hours and 4 hours) than the shot down HSR proposal, but it saved taxpayers a bundle. 

 

[clapclapclap 9000]

5 hours ago, bolverk said:

Southwest Airlines killed the Texas TGV (modeled after France) in the early 1990s when the plan was to link up the Triangle with high-speed rail. Now, they're less regional and aren't opposed but we still have the oil lobby and farmers/ranchers to contend with.  

LOL, the "oil lobby" doesn't care a whit about high speed rail in Texas.  The amount of total driving in Texas it would reduce would be a relative drop in the bucket barrel.

 

4 hours ago, bolverk said:

Yeah, a regional approach makes more sense in the US.

That Richard Florida map is so retarded.  There's some truth to it, but he so vastly oversimplified and he stretched a lot of things to neatly fit into tidy thesis that airhead journalists would lap up.  For example there's next to nothing in the 275 miles between Santa Fe and Pueblo.  A hell of a lot more population and cultural connections between MSP and Madison/Milwaukee than that.  Grouping the Rio Grande Valley with NOLA and Pensacola instead of San Antonio?  Etc.

BTW, did the OP also notice how extremely high gas prices/gas taxes are in France?  The amount of toll roads, their high tolls, and how much of their intercity routes are tolled?   (Red is tolled)

IIRC, didn't France at times restrict or close certain airline city pairs in order to encourage HSR use?  

Edited June 24, 2019 by clapclapclap

[wood 11757]

3 hours ago, tx 3 putt said:

DFW / HOU / SA / Austin / DFW - needs to happen in our lifetime 

Should, but won't, imho. They've been talking about that one for 40 years around here & it's not one inch closer to happening.

[wood 11757]

1 hour ago, Dbeasy said:

We will have self driving high speed autos that travel on raised monorails from city to city that then can be driven on streets. It’ll take 25 years.

So they're starting yesterday? 

[clapclapclap 9000]

12 minutes ago, wood said:

Should, but won't, imho. They've been talking about that one for 40 years around here & it's not one inch closer to happening.

More than talk.  A few months ago Texas Central had already acquired 1/3rd of the property needed for their mostly privately funded Dallas to Houston HSR route. 

[Parliament 14592]

Europe and Japan also had the "advantage" of all their stuff getting blowed up by the American Military. We gave them a clean slate.

[wood 11757]

8 minutes ago, clapclapclap said:

More than talk.  A few months ago Texas Central had already acquired 1/3rd of the property needed for their mostly privately funded Dallas to Houston HSR route. 

OK, cool. We'll see when they break ground. I'm rooting for this and would use the hell out of a rail triangle, but that's just one leg of it. I really doubt that leg happens anytime soon, much less the full triangle.

Edited June 23, 2019 by wood

[52-80 19377]

 

[Nice Guy Eddie 13724]

The Houston to Dallas proposed line is about as good as a deal Texas will ever get.  All paid with private money and they are attempting to purchase all of the land without eminent domain proceedings.  

I get that some farms or ranches will get split but my guess is that this occurred when major highways and freeways get built as well. Those families dealt with it. 

[Neonmoon 38130]

Rail is a great easy way to transport people. 

The US is too stupid to ever let it happen. 

[RDCanecutter 26866]

3 hours ago, Huckleberry said:

Exactly.

I believe that Paris should be in eastern Nebraska, and Lyon in western Missouri. Plus, France is actually in Europe, not the middle of the USA. Other than that it looks good.

[BrickHorn 18436]

Bonjour!

[Beau Vine 55854]

4 hours ago, Parliament said:

I believe property rights in the US make it much tougher to get the rights of way to do such things.

So you're saying the French are more likely to hand over their land than Texans are?  Do you have any evidence of that?

[PenelopeWitherspoon 19280]

5 hours ago, Hawndoh said:

Because the USA is really freaking huge and our cities are far apart. 

France is the size of Texas and they have 40 million more people than Texas. 

Relatively short distances and much higher density means trains work well. 

 

This is the right answer.

[Parliament 14592]

So you're saying the French are more likely to hand over their land than Texans are?  Do you have any evidence of that?

ISWYDT

In all seriousness, I suspect it is much easier in other countries to call it Eminent Domain and just take it. I might be wrong though.

[Onboard 2.0 9083]

5 hours ago, Hawndoh said:

Because the USA is really freaking huge and our cities are far apart. 

France is the size of Texas and they have 40 million more people than Texas. 

Relatively short distances and much higher density means trains work well. 

 

And rail projects are for some strange reason 2 -3x what European construction costs are. Listened to an NPR program discussing rail in America, and the cost of construction is always higher than any other country.  I love the TGV French rail line, they have rail down to a pretty well oiled science there.  We're geographically a much more spread out population, so those empty in between distances make it expensive as well.

[Bevo 13861]

1 hour ago, wood said:

OK, cool. We'll see when they break ground. I'm rooting for this and would use the hell out of a rail triangle, but that's just one leg of it. I really doubt that leg happens anytime soon, much less the full triangle.

I traveled your mom's triangle last night.

[Pato del Muerto 53420]

18 minutes ago, Onboard 2.0 said:

And rail projects are for some strange reason 2 -3x what European construction costs are. Listened to an NPR program discussing rail in America, and the cost of construction is always higher than any other country.  I love the TGV French rail line, they have rail down to a pretty well oiled science there.  We're geographically a much more spread out population, so those empty in between distances make it expensive as well.

Don’t build in those empty in between distances. Build groups of regional systems that make sense, and interconnect some of them when that makes sense. 

When I took a train from Prague to zlin, it was not high speed. It was a regular train and it stopped 5 or 6 times during the trip. High speed isn’t for every location. Use it where it makes sense. 

Edited June 23, 2019 by Pato del Muerto

[El Diablo 4232]

3 hours ago, bolverk said:

Yeah, a regional approach makes more sense in the US.

Alaska? 

[Onboard 2.0 9083]

5 minutes ago, Pato del Muerto said:

Don’t build in those empty in between distances. Build groups of regional systems that make sense, and interconnect some of them when that makes sense. 

When I took a train from Prague to zlin, it was not high speed. It was a regular train and it stopped 5 or 6 times during the trip. High speed isn’t for every location. Use it where it makes sense. 

Yep I agree, create those central distribution hubs, and use high speed where corridors are sorta there now (95 south from NY to Fla).  I love rail travel, and wish we had a better intra and inter state system.

The whole thing about cost of rail construction in the US was a big future of the presentation.  Per mile it's friggin' expensive regardless of its use, and is more than any where in the developed world allegedly.

[Nice Guy Eddie 13724]

Outside of the NE with the DC-NYC-Boston megalopolis, Texas seems like the perfect location.  And even if a rail company didn’t think the population could fully support it today, by the time you connected all 4 major cities, the Texas population would have grown into it.

outside of groups that could potentially get hurt by rail or having the family farm cut in half, I don’t see why anyone would be opposed to it.   Sometimes you can’t wait for the perfect project or perfect time especially for large infrastructure projects.

[El Diablo 4232]

Just thinking out loud here..what sort of infrastructure would be needed to service the hubs? I'm guessing that at this stage of city development it will be hard to route these trains into the city centers, right? 

[Guest Lobo]

Transportation will be viewed as a utility, not as an asset, within the next 10 years.  Once we shed this moronic and juvenile "there's my baby, that piece of shit in the driveway losing $100/day in value", and just view moving around like we do lights and internet and A/C and smart phone service...we'll be on our way.  We used to smile upon our fusebox, our compressor, our home phone, even our AOL service with a great deal of pride and ownership.  Then we eventually get wise and realize, it's just another piece of shit sucking money from us.  Pay for the bare-bones service, treat it as a transaction and we will gladly ditch our non-work vehicles for a chance at something easier, faster, that gives us a chance to surf porn instead of talk radio.  

[FartingMonk 3614]

Simpler answer is we work too far from work. Out of me and my 30+ coworkers. Me and one other person lives less than 40 minutes from work.  I bet it's like that for many people.  You can throw in the high speed rail but going to neighborhoods would be impossible for now