John Oliver discusses how Boeing went from being a company known for quality craftsmanship to one synonymous with crashes, mishaps, and “quality escape.” Wha...
This is a video from a US-based urbanist channel, and I particularly want to call attention to the modes graph at around the 6 minute mark. This compares driving, high speed rail, and air travel with the distance traveled and figures out the time factor for each compared to the distance. A destination within an hour’s drive tends to be better to drive, and then trains become better, and at some point, air travel is better.
As the video points out, the exact numbers depend a lot on individual people, but in general, high speed rail tends to beat air when the destination is within 750 miles.
One problem the US has isn’t just that it’s big, but that there are huge swaths of absolutely goddamn nothing for the span of several states. This is especially true north of Texas. Go from Minneapolis and trace west, and see how long it takes before you come near a city anyone outside the region cares about. Significantly south of that line is Denver, and you had to cross the Dakotas to get there. Then you’re hitting Salt Lake City after another large state’s worth of travel (about 500 miles, so we are still within the range where high speed rail would be better). If you were to stay to the north, you wouldn’t find much of anything until you get to the west coast.
What that means is that we can have rail that links up the east coast, the Great Lakes states, and the south east and Texas, and then another set of high speed rail that hugs the west coast. Linking those two up, though, is a huge task, and air travel will be faster.
We’re likely to have two different networks that, at best, are only connected to the south. Flights across the Plains and Rockies are here to stay. That said, even getting that done would be a huge improvement.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wE5G1kTndI4
This is a video from a US-based urbanist channel, and I particularly want to call attention to the modes graph at around the 6 minute mark. This compares driving, high speed rail, and air travel with the distance traveled and figures out the time factor for each compared to the distance. A destination within an hour’s drive tends to be better to drive, and then trains become better, and at some point, air travel is better.
As the video points out, the exact numbers depend a lot on individual people, but in general, high speed rail tends to beat air when the destination is within 750 miles.
One problem the US has isn’t just that it’s big, but that there are huge swaths of absolutely goddamn nothing for the span of several states. This is especially true north of Texas. Go from Minneapolis and trace west, and see how long it takes before you come near a city anyone outside the region cares about. Significantly south of that line is Denver, and you had to cross the Dakotas to get there. Then you’re hitting Salt Lake City after another large state’s worth of travel (about 500 miles, so we are still within the range where high speed rail would be better). If you were to stay to the north, you wouldn’t find much of anything until you get to the west coast.
What that means is that we can have rail that links up the east coast, the Great Lakes states, and the south east and Texas, and then another set of high speed rail that hugs the west coast. Linking those two up, though, is a huge task, and air travel will be faster.
We’re likely to have two different networks that, at best, are only connected to the south. Flights across the Plains and Rockies are here to stay. That said, even getting that done would be a huge improvement.
Removed by mod
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=wE5G1kTndI4
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=wE5G1kTndI4
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.