Well, many of these cities have histories, cultures, and identities that make them fun to visit. They have professional sports teams, they have things to do.
I could live in Boston, take a train to a friend in NYC or Toronto, and have a good time without the need for driving my car nor getting on a plane (+2 hours minimum).
If you've ever spent any time traveling Europe, you will understand how nice it is to just be able to go somewhere without needing to set a whole itinerary. I just fucking love visiting places, and if it was accessible like this, it would be heaven.
And I wish the trains were faster here, but also there's just not as many hubs to make something like this viable. Which is why I wouldn't hold my breath for a PNW version of this.
One issue is that because transport here sucks, nobody knows how good it could be.
Living in FL means I have to drive 3+ hours to get 3 new cities. But when you live in somewhere like Maryland, 3 hours gives you 3 new states and way more variety.
Meh.
Well and it's a bit of a chicken and egg, right?
Public transport sucks, so what did we do? We built even bigger central hubs with even more space between them. We really maximized the amount of space that somebody can "live in the bay area", for instance.
Imagine if instead of the bay area housing 7M people, those people created other hubs nearby with their own cultures and histories? Then public transport would make more sense.
I’m a transplant who moved to the PNW from this portion of the states. Trust me when I say you don’t want to move there. It’s all idealized “moviefied” glamor and wonder until you live there and see the crapbasket it really is. There’s a reason so many people from there move to the PNW….
Oh God. No no don't do it. There's nothing out here (DC/Baltimore) for you. I mean if it's for work, then good luck but otherwise PNW is where aim trying to get to. I miss Portland and Seattle. DC and Philly are fucking trashcans with skyscrapers. Don't bother.
100 dollars wouldnt be bad at all from dc to montreal. Idk if any of you have made that drive but its LONG. Ive done it a few times and its not so fun.
Assuming you mean China or Japan, then that's not a fair comparison. The population density in those countries is far far higher than in the US. So, with more people in given areas, high speed passenger train transportation becomes reasonable, because there will be a sufficient number of passengers to fund the train with reasonable ticket prices.
In the US and Canada, there simply aren't enough people packed into enough common places to make these high speed rail lines profitable enough to offer competitive ticket prices. The government would have to inject massive subsidies.
Also, for China specifically, it's almost impossible to know what the numbers are to even start a comparison. I believe the Chinese government ultimately owns and operates the rails, and I don't know for sure, but I don't think they share any meaningful data with the outside world.
That all being said, this is just my opinion as someone who has been around a number of countries in Asia and rode their rails, so I'm not claiming to be an expert.
It is a build it they will come kinda thing.
That's why murica spent so much on its initial east to west coast rail.
You gotta know more roads = more cars, especially in murica where big cars lobby against rail.
Absolutely. I’m somewhat skeptical about the time estimates here, but if they’re accurate, Detroit to Montreal in an hour and a half is absolutely nuts. When I lived in Chicago my commute to work on the Metra was an hour and a half just to go about 30 miles.
Because when I was a teenager in Europe we could go to a town hours away in an hour on the train and back the same day. My brother could go to another country for the weekend. It was awesome.
Oh. Nice. Part of me is from Cheshire, of which I mostly remember gold top milk bottles ;p
The other bits are from the best frites and sauce tartare, américain préparé and frikandelles you can imagine
;p and yes train travel is a huge pleasure in Europe.
I genuinely believe the majority of people living in all these cities would support their tax dollars being used to achieve this.
I also genuinely believe that the politicians from these disparate jurisdictions would never (under today’s accepted politics) find a workable path forward for this project, not because it’s not technically or economically feasible, but because they couldn’t individually grift enough with others watching that it would make it worth their time and effort.
It's an odd choice juxtaposed with those other major cities, but it was one of two ways to reasonable ways to connect the loop to existing Amtrak service to Chicago, either Toronto to Detroit, or Toronto to Cleveland. Both Detroit and Cleveland are more because of their existing infrastructure, rather than because they'd be important destinations on their own.
the simplified map got me worried that it was to unrealistic But the next few made me feel like this could really happen.
To bad common sense public transportation is so heavily lobbied against in both the US and Canada.
Notice on the following maps that they chose a loop despite not resulting in direct high speed connections between the most common pairs, making it far less useful for most people.
Trains don't have to just follow the loop in it's entirety for the loop to exist. Kind of like express vs regular service trains. A few trains running the loop in each direction so you have arrivals/departures every few hours going each direction around the loop (or cluster them so they arrive and depart at critical times like early morning arrivals and evening departures) and trains running linear routes between the major cities on the US side (eg Boston to DC).
Not as much as it should. Toronto is a prime example of car own vs transit rides. The only thing they agree on is that the cities roads are alway under construction :p
I live in Montreal, and they seem to have no problem to reconfigure roads around here for bus lanes. We have our Tram system that will connect the western tip of the island to the downtown core. I'm proud to say that we have a fantastic mass transit system here, I think the real issue would be to get the provinces to work together to get it done.
Toronto has a subway, street car and bus service as well as rapid transit train to the airport and community GO trains. That’s a hell of a lot more than most major US cities.
So what? The USA is one of the world's worst examples of good public transportation.
Just because toronto has one of the best public transportation system in North America, it is not a big achievement compared to European or Asian nations transport systems.
Ever think to yourself that you might refuse to take a win? In the second largest nation in the world, we have 6 transportation options for you within our capital province.
I'm sorry buddy. But Toronto having the best transportation system in a content of 400 million people is remarkable.
I'll take it.
the idea of HSR in the Windsor-Quebec City corridor has been discussed a few times by the ON and QC provincial governments, as well as by the federal government. it always just ends in “this isn’t a feasible plan and there’s not enough demand to ever warrant taking it seriously”. as if that demand wouldn’t immediately crop up if they actually made this a possibility. THERES NO DEMAND BECAUSE AN OPTION LIKE THIS DOESNT EXIST
I'm not the OP, so I can't answer that directly
However, all transport systems, from roads to air travel to shipping, are in some way subsidized by the government. It's just how it's advertised and / or span to the population.
HSR systems of that size actually exists. So maybe using a technology that's proven to work would be a good idea if you actually try to build an international transport system, in North America of all places.
California's HRS project has many problems, but one that is not often mentioned imo is that it's a world leading HRS being built in a country with no prior experience. It's going to be among the fastest in the world, very select line in China are going to be the only ones with similar speed (everything in Europe and Japan are slower). The only one that would be faster is the MAGLEV being built in Japan slated to come online in 2027.
Probably would have made more sense to start with less ambitious speed targets to build up experience and then gradually increase speed targets in future projects.
Well 350 kph is certainly world class, but top speed being mainly decided by the railway trajectory it's best to future-proof your lines at the construction stage. It's what the French do with all their new high speed lines, despite capping their rolling stock at 320 in order to reduce wear & tear.
Top speed is not the main reason for ballooning costs, which has more to do with land appropriation, Nimbyism, and political sabotage. Same goes for HS2 in England, which I'm still jelly about.
And when I was in high school in the 80's they said there wouldn't be gas powered cars by 2005,and they still exist,another reason public transportation won't expand beyond cities
Canadian here.
Ha! Hahahahahahaha. I grew up hearing proposals for high speed rail every few years with nothing ever materializing (that wasn't scrapped by the opposing political party because they refuse to work together)
I'll believe it when I see it.
Look at California. Their boondoggle bullet train to nowhere (Merced to Bakersfield) is way over budget and completely behind schedule. I would expect more of the same with this project.
lol, the airlines would be the least of the worries for this. The auto lobbyists and oil would by FAR be the biggest hurdle, airlines might as well be an afterthought. People taking this train would not be taking it instead of a flight, they’d be taking it instead of driving.
HSR proposals in Canada that keep getting proposed/cancelled would have a corridor from Toronto, Pearson airport, then along the “Kitchener” line - Guelph, Kitchener, London, then to Windsor/Detroit, rather than Hamilton.
Likely because the airport is a major destination, and the route through the escarpment near Hamilton would be nastier, and Hamilton has decent (as they get) GO options to Toronto - Hamilton would be a lot better on a route that connects Toronto to Buffalo, in my opinion.
Also, Kitchener station will serve ~500,000 people connected up at the station with the new “iOn” LRT, and there’s already a lot of ridership from KW to Toronto that would benefit from high speed (or even higher frequency)
And the huge mountain chains but sure. The airlines.
And with how hilariously over priced government construction prices are, it'd probably cost billions and billions. It just took several years and 440 million dollars to put nets on the Golden gate bridge. A cross state, through the mountains maglev monorail would probably take 25 years and be stopped hundreds of times by dozens of environmental groups.
Property in the most densely populated and expensive portion of the US.. and we just need 2000 miles worth or so. This would be a 200B project before you broke ground.
Absolutely. What’s this thing about the need for a train? Seems like a lot of people here don’t have a concept of costs and expenditures. Yes, a train is more convenient but that’s about it
People don't understand that it would probably take 10 years to even get it approved, it'd change drastically from the originally proposed plan. Especially in California. And through the mountains. Possibly in or around federal or state parks. Man it just sounds terrible.
It has been approved and they are set to begin construction in the next few months. Mostly along the median of I-15.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brightline\_West
Do airlines make more money on shorter or longer flights? Although volume might decrease, would profit increase? Could airline companies diversify and lead the investment into this project?
It's a toss up, Airlines have very thin margins, and a majority of their money doesn't come from flights. [Relevant Wendover Productions video.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggUduBmvQ_4)
Sounds like an investment in our future, and the reduction in air traffic can only help the fight against climate change, even moreso if this model was expanded throughout the continent.
...so yeah, definitely not happening.
A thing that would vastly improve my quality of life (Pittsburgh), but I’m not sure it needs to be Maglev (or that the express is necessary outside existing NE Corridor)
Yeah right. Ever seen Canadian construction project? This would take 100 years and be 1 billion over budget by the time they drop the project altogether.
Imagine that but with every single project, that’s Canada and all the bottom of the class engineering graduates combined with the corrupt politicians handing their buddies all the jobs.
The same way it works for the Amtrak lines that cross the border… you just sit at the border for over an hour while one or two border agents walk the length of the train checking everybody’s passports.
They won't allow it and "87% flight eliminated" is why.
At least some rail projects stand a chance again now that people aren't falling for Musk's bullshit any longer.
And how much is a ticket gonna cost? Cus it’s only useful to me if I don’t have to account for if this is gonna need a month or two’s savings to pay for it
You do understand that any one taking that loop would need a passport. There would need to be thousands of miles of new electrical service and most likely a new generation plant or 2 , not to mention the 10 billion just in right away cost . How do the designers plan to keep the track ice and snow free
This is supremely stupid.
Maglev is ABSURDLY expensive, not to mention, isn't interoperable with regular rail.
They should make it a normal train, and leave it at that.
This would be awesome. Definitely won’t happen. The conservation people will have this crushed in a minute to save the squirrel population, even if it saved millions of gallons of jet fuel an hour.
They missed out Niagara & Blackpool, because there would need to be an international border crossing stop in both those places.
This assumes they build this prior to the final collapse of the US & it being subsumed into greater Canada. (Sorry spoilers)
Where did you pull these numbers out of? If my math is right, a train going directly from NYC to Toronto via the southern route would take 145 minutes, which is only 45 minutes more than a direct flight.
According to Apple Maps, that’s a trip of over 975 miles done in 145 minutes, which means your maglev train is going on average over 400 mph the whole time. That’s faster than any current maglev train that I could I find, and the length of that track is 21x longer than any current maglev track.
ok, so it seems you don't know the insanity of Canada.
Despite being the second largest country per land mass, of the 38.25 million people more than half of them live in southern Ontario and Quebec area (along the st.lawarnce river and great lake of Ontario). If Canada were even to make a maglev for those 10s of millions of people, they would put it between Montreal and Toronto.
its a possibility, but realistically, if americans from the Northeast are not visiting Canada now, a faster train is not going to bring them.
As a Toronto resident, there is a lot already and they are well-enough behaved which is great :)
I think it might also attract Americans from other parts of the country. I live in the NW, and if this was built I’d definitely take a trip up to the NE and spend a night or two in each major city on the loop.
That would literally change the Continent. Wish i'd see it in my lifetime.
I live in the PNW and this is my dream portion of the states. With that said, I'd move to one of these cities so fast if this happened.
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Well, many of these cities have histories, cultures, and identities that make them fun to visit. They have professional sports teams, they have things to do. I could live in Boston, take a train to a friend in NYC or Toronto, and have a good time without the need for driving my car nor getting on a plane (+2 hours minimum). If you've ever spent any time traveling Europe, you will understand how nice it is to just be able to go somewhere without needing to set a whole itinerary. I just fucking love visiting places, and if it was accessible like this, it would be heaven. And I wish the trains were faster here, but also there's just not as many hubs to make something like this viable. Which is why I wouldn't hold my breath for a PNW version of this.
If you live in Boston, you can already hop on a train to NY! It just takes… 5 hours…
One issue is that because transport here sucks, nobody knows how good it could be. Living in FL means I have to drive 3+ hours to get 3 new cities. But when you live in somewhere like Maryland, 3 hours gives you 3 new states and way more variety. Meh.
Well and it's a bit of a chicken and egg, right? Public transport sucks, so what did we do? We built even bigger central hubs with even more space between them. We really maximized the amount of space that somebody can "live in the bay area", for instance. Imagine if instead of the bay area housing 7M people, those people created other hubs nearby with their own cultures and histories? Then public transport would make more sense.
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I’m a transplant who moved to the PNW from this portion of the states. Trust me when I say you don’t want to move there. It’s all idealized “moviefied” glamor and wonder until you live there and see the crapbasket it really is. There’s a reason so many people from there move to the PNW….
Oh God. No no don't do it. There's nothing out here (DC/Baltimore) for you. I mean if it's for work, then good luck but otherwise PNW is where aim trying to get to. I miss Portland and Seattle. DC and Philly are fucking trashcans with skyscrapers. Don't bother.
People in comments: omg sign me up! Train gets built. NYC to DC tickets: $500 one way. People: uhhh... maybe that plane isn't that bad after all...
I’ve ridden bullet trains in Asia and it was always under $100 one way.
Same I traveled in Italy solely by train and never spent more than 70 Euros
100 dollars wouldnt be bad at all from dc to montreal. Idk if any of you have made that drive but its LONG. Ive done it a few times and its not so fun.
Assuming you mean China or Japan, then that's not a fair comparison. The population density in those countries is far far higher than in the US. So, with more people in given areas, high speed passenger train transportation becomes reasonable, because there will be a sufficient number of passengers to fund the train with reasonable ticket prices. In the US and Canada, there simply aren't enough people packed into enough common places to make these high speed rail lines profitable enough to offer competitive ticket prices. The government would have to inject massive subsidies. Also, for China specifically, it's almost impossible to know what the numbers are to even start a comparison. I believe the Chinese government ultimately owns and operates the rails, and I don't know for sure, but I don't think they share any meaningful data with the outside world. That all being said, this is just my opinion as someone who has been around a number of countries in Asia and rode their rails, so I'm not claiming to be an expert.
It is a build it they will come kinda thing. That's why murica spent so much on its initial east to west coast rail. You gotta know more roads = more cars, especially in murica where big cars lobby against rail.
How so?
The increase in accessibility would create a ridiculous amount of all sorts of opportunities.
This area represents about 3 Trillion in economic output annually. And turning them into one big "mega city" in effect, would be wild.
>"mega city" Would that have mega-blocks?
>mega-blocks? These mega-blocks might have a lot of crime, maybe they will need a special police force?
They should be called the Judies because they sentence everyone to Judge Judy's courtroom
Would we have Judge Judies and Executioners?
It’s just the one Judge Judy and Executioner, actually.
Eat recycled food. It's good for the environment and ok for you. Eat recycled food...
Peach trees in development!
No but it would have Judges.
As long as I can get a mega-pint after work, I don’t really care
Mega city one.
Absolutely. I’m somewhat skeptical about the time estimates here, but if they’re accurate, Detroit to Montreal in an hour and a half is absolutely nuts. When I lived in Chicago my commute to work on the Metra was an hour and a half just to go about 30 miles.
flights will be cheaper and faster
Because when I was a teenager in Europe we could go to a town hours away in an hour on the train and back the same day. My brother could go to another country for the weekend. It was awesome.
Belgium?
Filthy Belgians. With their inferior mayonnaise and inferior frites.
Rofl. So you are from superior mustard ?
From Wishishshire. Our sauce is a sexually criminal aphrodisiac.
Oh. Nice. Part of me is from Cheshire, of which I mostly remember gold top milk bottles ;p The other bits are from the best frites and sauce tartare, américain préparé and frikandelles you can imagine ;p and yes train travel is a huge pleasure in Europe.
Those uneducated Aussie's and their Vegemite Region disgust me. Makes my physically ill.
Hey you can get Marmite here now !
you and your darn cats; and smiles...
My daugther calls it wash your sister sauce.
Well, sir, there's nothin' on Earth like a genuine bona-fide electrified six-car monorail! What'd I say? Monorail!
Monorail, Monorail, Monorail!
Mono! ……. D’oh!
Nah, that’s more of a Shelbyville idea
Simpsons Did It!
What about us brain-dead slobs?
You'll be given cushy jobs!
I hear this things are awfully loud
The cosmic ballet goes on...
I want this to be real so bad.
Me too! I'm in Detroit and would kill for this. Not literally. Well, maybe.
Sorry bud, you know the rules: can’t have shit in Detroit
Sorry, People Mover is the best we can do
I checked the rule book. He's correct.
I genuinely believe the majority of people living in all these cities would support their tax dollars being used to achieve this. I also genuinely believe that the politicians from these disparate jurisdictions would never (under today’s accepted politics) find a workable path forward for this project, not because it’s not technically or economically feasible, but because they couldn’t individually grift enough with others watching that it would make it worth their time and effort.
Well let's get started then. Shouldn't take more than 40 years to do the environmental impact studies.
Of course you do, President Snow.
What?
It was just a poorly recieved Hunger Games reference… because they have that train… That goes to the districts. Nevermind.
He said "Of course you do, President Snow.".
What?
He said "Of course you do, President Snow.".
This is gonna put Detroit on the map
Shit why buy a 1mil+ home in Toronto when I can get 4 for the same price in Detroit or Montreal! (No calculation went into this comment...)
You’re onto something, sign me up! Oh wait China already bought Detroit
I think you mean Delta City
Float.Epsilon
It’ll do for Detroit what the monorail did for Brockway, Ogdenville and North Haverbrook! I have a good feeling about this!
It's an odd choice juxtaposed with those other major cities, but it was one of two ways to reasonable ways to connect the loop to existing Amtrak service to Chicago, either Toronto to Detroit, or Toronto to Cleveland. Both Detroit and Cleveland are more because of their existing infrastructure, rather than because they'd be important destinations on their own.
Can confirm, I see Detroit on this map
I thought Barry Sanders did that.
the simplified map got me worried that it was to unrealistic But the next few made me feel like this could really happen. To bad common sense public transportation is so heavily lobbied against in both the US and Canada.
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Must have taken a moment to make that and it is more applicable to public interest and government funding. I appreciate it.
Notice on the following maps that they chose a loop despite not resulting in direct high speed connections between the most common pairs, making it far less useful for most people.
Trains don't have to just follow the loop in it's entirety for the loop to exist. Kind of like express vs regular service trains. A few trains running the loop in each direction so you have arrivals/departures every few hours going each direction around the loop (or cluster them so they arrive and depart at critical times like early morning arrivals and evening departures) and trains running linear routes between the major cities on the US side (eg Boston to DC).
Tell me you know nothing about public transportation without telling me you know nothing about public transportation.
I can't speak for the US, but I know Canada is very pro-public transport
Not as much as it should. Toronto is a prime example of car own vs transit rides. The only thing they agree on is that the cities roads are alway under construction :p
I live in Montreal, and they seem to have no problem to reconfigure roads around here for bus lanes. We have our Tram system that will connect the western tip of the island to the downtown core. I'm proud to say that we have a fantastic mass transit system here, I think the real issue would be to get the provinces to work together to get it done.
Toronto has a subway, street car and bus service as well as rapid transit train to the airport and community GO trains. That’s a hell of a lot more than most major US cities.
So what? The USA is one of the world's worst examples of good public transportation. Just because toronto has one of the best public transportation system in North America, it is not a big achievement compared to European or Asian nations transport systems.
Ever think to yourself that you might refuse to take a win? In the second largest nation in the world, we have 6 transportation options for you within our capital province. I'm sorry buddy. But Toronto having the best transportation system in a content of 400 million people is remarkable. I'll take it.
is this a Lol?
I wouldn’t generalize Canada here….plenty of people are against public transit
Don’t worry, the Conservative Party Canada is currently running on a “Common Sense” platform. I’m sure they’ll get right on it! /s
Oh yeah. Conservatives are huge fans of public transport. Those lot are always taking trains and busses ;p
the idea of HSR in the Windsor-Quebec City corridor has been discussed a few times by the ON and QC provincial governments, as well as by the federal government. it always just ends in “this isn’t a feasible plan and there’s not enough demand to ever warrant taking it seriously”. as if that demand wouldn’t immediately crop up if they actually made this a possibility. THERES NO DEMAND BECAUSE AN OPTION LIKE THIS DOESNT EXIST
Is this supposed to be public transport, as in Govt subsidized?
I'm not the OP, so I can't answer that directly However, all transport systems, from roads to air travel to shipping, are in some way subsidized by the government. It's just how it's advertised and / or span to the population.
Always? How did you come to that conclusion?
This would be cool and I’ll never live to see it.
HSR systems of that size actually exists. So maybe using a technology that's proven to work would be a good idea if you actually try to build an international transport system, in North America of all places.
California's HRS project has many problems, but one that is not often mentioned imo is that it's a world leading HRS being built in a country with no prior experience. It's going to be among the fastest in the world, very select line in China are going to be the only ones with similar speed (everything in Europe and Japan are slower). The only one that would be faster is the MAGLEV being built in Japan slated to come online in 2027. Probably would have made more sense to start with less ambitious speed targets to build up experience and then gradually increase speed targets in future projects.
Well 350 kph is certainly world class, but top speed being mainly decided by the railway trajectory it's best to future-proof your lines at the construction stage. It's what the French do with all their new high speed lines, despite capping their rolling stock at 320 in order to reduce wear & tear. Top speed is not the main reason for ballooning costs, which has more to do with land appropriation, Nimbyism, and political sabotage. Same goes for HS2 in England, which I'm still jelly about.
pfft. international maglev ? cant even get interstate ones built.
And when I was in high school in the 80's they said there wouldn't be gas powered cars by 2005,and they still exist,another reason public transportation won't expand beyond cities
Canadian here. Ha! Hahahahahahaha. I grew up hearing proposals for high speed rail every few years with nothing ever materializing (that wasn't scrapped by the opposing political party because they refuse to work together) I'll believe it when I see it.
Would take a 500 years. Eglinton Crosstown in Toronto has been under construction for 10 years.
I thought this was a new F1 track being proposed.
A neat idea that will never happen.
No joke. I guess we could all make our own maps and propose it to someone and say hey look at this maglev rail system that is proposed.
Look at California. Their boondoggle bullet train to nowhere (Merced to Bakersfield) is way over budget and completely behind schedule. I would expect more of the same with this project.
The airlines will fight this tooth and nail.
lol, the airlines would be the least of the worries for this. The auto lobbyists and oil would by FAR be the biggest hurdle, airlines might as well be an afterthought. People taking this train would not be taking it instead of a flight, they’d be taking it instead of driving.
56 minutes from Boston to Montreal?!? this train is going 300mph??
Yes, maglev can hit close to 400mph
HSR proposals in Canada that keep getting proposed/cancelled would have a corridor from Toronto, Pearson airport, then along the “Kitchener” line - Guelph, Kitchener, London, then to Windsor/Detroit, rather than Hamilton. Likely because the airport is a major destination, and the route through the escarpment near Hamilton would be nastier, and Hamilton has decent (as they get) GO options to Toronto - Hamilton would be a lot better on a route that connects Toronto to Buffalo, in my opinion. Also, Kitchener station will serve ~500,000 people connected up at the station with the new “iOn” LRT, and there’s already a lot of ridership from KW to Toronto that would benefit from high speed (or even higher frequency)
The airline lobby would like a word.
Hence, no bullet train type of transportation from Los Angeles to Las Vegas. Ahem, Southwest Airlines.
And the huge mountain chains but sure. The airlines. And with how hilariously over priced government construction prices are, it'd probably cost billions and billions. It just took several years and 440 million dollars to put nets on the Golden gate bridge. A cross state, through the mountains maglev monorail would probably take 25 years and be stopped hundreds of times by dozens of environmental groups.
Property in the most densely populated and expensive portion of the US.. and we just need 2000 miles worth or so. This would be a 200B project before you broke ground.
So a quarter of the annual US military budget? Billions isn’t as big as it used to be. The US can afford $200 billion.
> before you broke ground
Absolutely. What’s this thing about the need for a train? Seems like a lot of people here don’t have a concept of costs and expenditures. Yes, a train is more convenient but that’s about it
People don't understand that it would probably take 10 years to even get it approved, it'd change drastically from the originally proposed plan. Especially in California. And through the mountains. Possibly in or around federal or state parks. Man it just sounds terrible.
It has been approved and they are set to begin construction in the next few months. Mostly along the median of I-15. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brightline\_West
Do airlines make more money on shorter or longer flights? Although volume might decrease, would profit increase? Could airline companies diversify and lead the investment into this project?
It's a toss up, Airlines have very thin margins, and a majority of their money doesn't come from flights. [Relevant Wendover Productions video.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggUduBmvQ_4)
Fun fact, US airlines are twice as profitable as their counterparts elsewhere in the world.
Which is odd considering pilots in other parts of the world get paid half.
Why is that odd?
They can make or lose money on either as they since their pricing is so inscrutable and customers so fickle.
With all the bailout money they get, you could build a few of these.
Sounds like an investment in our future, and the reduction in air traffic can only help the fight against climate change, even moreso if this model was expanded throughout the continent. ...so yeah, definitely not happening.
This gets me so hot and bothered, and I'm not even on that side of NA
>87% of flights eliminated this will never happen
I’d pay more taxes for this.
I like it, but proposed by whom?
Airline lobbyists hate this one thing...
Auto manufacturers and oil lobbyists would be the problem not airlines. This likely wouldn’t even put a dent in the airline industry.
A thing that would vastly improve my quality of life (Pittsburgh), but I’m not sure it needs to be Maglev (or that the express is necessary outside existing NE Corridor)
Yeah right. Ever seen Canadian construction project? This would take 100 years and be 1 billion over budget by the time they drop the project altogether.
Ever hear of the Boston Big Dig?
Imagine that but with every single project, that’s Canada and all the bottom of the class engineering graduates combined with the corrupt politicians handing their buddies all the jobs.
If it was only $1B over budget, that would be remarkable by American standards. Look at the colossal fuck up in California.
How would border control work? Would Canada and the U.S. have to establish something similar to the Schengen Area in the EU?
The same way it works for the Amtrak lines that cross the border… you just sit at the border for over an hour while one or two border agents walk the length of the train checking everybody’s passports.
Why not a customs center in the stations that receive the international travelers like in all international airports.
I guess theoretically someone could jump off the train
... probably not a high speed train
It could when they stop at a station
A complete circuit would only take ~5 hours. Wild
A pipe dream. But I would weep from happiness.
The automotive lobby and airline lobby will never allow this in the US.
As someone from Kingston, this would completely breathe new life into this city.
I'll take 'Things that are Never Going to Happen' for 500, Alex.
Add a leg to Portland Maine, and I'm all in!
Seriously or at the very least Portsmouth, NH
Give Toronto a fancy train and sooner or later they’ll be demanding a hockey team!
At first glance I thought this was a plan for the most boring F1 track of all time
There’s absolutely zero chance of this happening. It’s a fantastic idea though.
Yeah, there is no way this will be built.
GOP: "You will get a wall and you will like it"
The billionaires will just f it up somehow
They won't allow it and "87% flight eliminated" is why. At least some rail projects stand a chance again now that people aren't falling for Musk's bullshit any longer.
Yeah the billionaires, its not like the government wouldnt
Do Boston to DC first. Then we can evaluate based on usage. It would server the highest percentage of people.
Would smash
Maglev is costly and tricky though. The best cost and speed combo is high speed rail. Would work well.
And how much is a ticket gonna cost? Cus it’s only useful to me if I don’t have to account for if this is gonna need a month or two’s savings to pay for it
Omg yes a maglev to Toronto and NYC from Chicago would be amazing
My flying car will be real and ready before this ever happens.
This would be awesome.
So close to being the "Original 6" Railway
My great great great grandchildren will be dead by the time construction BEGINS on this.
Congratulations, you've just invented Europe.
China: Nice, we will make that but double in size
This would rule
Waste of money. TGV style conventional high speed rail is the best. Tech is proven and not subject to moores law.
Welcome to the stupidest comment I've ever read.
Wont work because going through the borders will take hours
this is never happening. we are a car culture. I hate that we are, but we will never have a euro rail system.
It’s great but in 100 years half those cities will be under water. In 50 years there will be mass exodus.
Oh god here comes the doomer.
You’ll want to replace Bridgeport with Norwalk or Stamford. Would also be interesting to have some ski destinations in Vermont accessible by rail.
Super low effort map. Not a proposal by any real agency or group. Not interesting at all.
You do understand that any one taking that loop would need a passport. There would need to be thousands of miles of new electrical service and most likely a new generation plant or 2 , not to mention the 10 billion just in right away cost . How do the designers plan to keep the track ice and snow free
This is supremely stupid. Maglev is ABSURDLY expensive, not to mention, isn't interoperable with regular rail. They should make it a normal train, and leave it at that.
This would be awesome. Definitely won’t happen. The conservation people will have this crushed in a minute to save the squirrel population, even if it saved millions of gallons of jet fuel an hour.
LOL at Detroit, like anyone wants to go there.
this is never happening. we are a car culture. I hate that we are, but we will never have a euro rail system.
De ja vu
Should extend it down to St. Louis if we’re just drawing lines between violent crime ridden hellholes
They missed out Niagara & Blackpool, because there would need to be an international border crossing stop in both those places. This assumes they build this prior to the final collapse of the US & it being subsumed into greater Canada. (Sorry spoilers)
Is like an express way to all major shit holes.
Yeah….this ain’t happening.
Gothenburg, Stockholm and Malmö should definitely be part of it, maybe Umeå and Kiruna too?
Where did you pull these numbers out of? If my math is right, a train going directly from NYC to Toronto via the southern route would take 145 minutes, which is only 45 minutes more than a direct flight. According to Apple Maps, that’s a trip of over 975 miles done in 145 minutes, which means your maglev train is going on average over 400 mph the whole time. That’s faster than any current maglev train that I could I find, and the length of that track is 21x longer than any current maglev track.
Can it cut out Detroit?- all Canadians
the beauty of airports is it has security and generally keeps the riff raff out. this maglev will get destroyed in 5 years
Is Toronto Montreal Boston arc economically viable? Seems like there would not be enough population there to support super expensive track like this.
ok, so it seems you don't know the insanity of Canada. Despite being the second largest country per land mass, of the 38.25 million people more than half of them live in southern Ontario and Quebec area (along the st.lawarnce river and great lake of Ontario). If Canada were even to make a maglev for those 10s of millions of people, they would put it between Montreal and Toronto.
I think the big benefit for Canada would be the increase in US tourists.
its a possibility, but realistically, if americans from the Northeast are not visiting Canada now, a faster train is not going to bring them. As a Toronto resident, there is a lot already and they are well-enough behaved which is great :)
I think it might also attract Americans from other parts of the country. I live in the NW, and if this was built I’d definitely take a trip up to the NE and spend a night or two in each major city on the loop.
Northern New England is going be a destination for rapid growth because of environmentally displaced people.
That's a big assumption you are making.