DC to B-more in 15 minutes

[slappy]

Don't see this mentioned in any local (or national) media outlets. If this can be done, the NYC connection becomes much more realistic.

Japan has promised to provide the United States with loans to cover half the cost of a high-speed Maglev train link between Washington DC and Baltimore
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/japan/10555330/Japan-offers-to-lend-US-half-the-cost-of-Super-Maglev-train-between-Washington-and-Baltimore.html

[sweetcell]

wow, that looks awesome.  i wonder where they are going to put the tracks, and will it require displacing/removing any existing tracks.

[atomic]

wow, that looks awesome.  i wonder where they are going to put the tracks, and will it require displacing/removing any existing tracks.

If they did it would be exciting.  I doubt they will do it.  This governement seems against doing things useful.  If they did I think they would have to build new tracks.   I don't think they could suspend service while working on the new tracks which I am sure would take years to complete.

[chaz]

Amtrak has turned in to such a ripoff.  Can't wait to see what the prices on this would be.  It will probably drive down costs for Amtrak though

[hutch]

pitiful that we have to rely on the Japanese to provide us inducements to consider infrastructure investments...



2014 and we're still crawling around the rails like its 1980...Europe has had this high speed shit for decades now! I can remember ridin the Shinkansen in the early 80s for god's sake..

pa the tic.

[James Ford]

Europe has 739 million people compared to 314 million for the USA housed in roughly the same amount of space. So you're comparing apples with oranges.

pitiful that we have to rely on the Japanese to provide us inducements to consider infrastructure investments...



2014 and we're still crawling around the rails like its 1980...Europe has had this high speed shit for decades now! I can remember ridin the Shinkansen in the early 80s for god's sake..

pa the tic.

[slappy]

pitiful that we have to rely on the Japanese to provide us inducements to consider infrastructure investments...



2014 and we're still crawling around the rails like its 1980...Europe has had this high speed shit for decades now! I can remember ridin the Shinkansen in the early 80s for god's sake..

pa the tic.

Japan is on the 50th anniversary of high speed rail! October 1964
You can go from London to Brussels thru the Chunnel in half the time as DC to NYC for the same price.

'Merica fuck yeah. Our politicians are the bitches to the auto and gas industries.

[stevewizzle]

maglev technology is fucking awesome.

i road the maglev from shanghai to the shanghai airport last year... took 12 minutes to travel 30 miles i believe, and it wasn't running as fast as it could.

incredibly smooth trip. when it goes around banked turns it's slightly terrifying. 

[Yada]

pitiful that we have to rely on the Japanese to provide us inducements to consider infrastructure investments...



2014 and we're still crawling around the rails like its 1980...Europe has had this high speed shit for decades now! I can remember ridin the Shinkansen in the early 80s for god's sake..

pa the tic.

On a separate note, anyone catch the clean tech piece on 60 Minutes Sunday night?  Pretty awesome that China is picking up all the pieces to that... sigh.

[slappy]

Europe has 739 million people compared to 314 million for the USA housed in roughly the same amount of space. So you're comparing apples with oranges.

Actually you're comparing apples with oranges. Population density is what matters.
Europe doesn't build/finance high speed rail. Individual countries do. That's why the Nordic countries don't have anything faster than the Acela.
One needs only to look at a Population density map to see the rationale.

[notme]

Amtrak is subsidized heavily by the gov't/tax dollars. if it lowers prices guess who pays. kind of like metro. metro loses $ on every trip.

[Yada]

Amtrak is subsidized heavily by the gov't/tax dollars. if it lowers prices guess who pays. kind of like metro. metro loses $ on every trip.

People also have a skewed opinion of Amtrak in this area because it's outrageously over priced. You can buy tickets in other parts of the country for DIRT cheap, I guess they need to milk the area of the country where they can actually make money.

[slappy]

Amtrak is subsidized heavily by the gov't/tax dollars. if it lowers prices guess who pays. kind of like metro. metro loses $ on every trip.

Yeah ... and of the 47,182 miles of interstate highway (estimated cost of $425 billion), only 2,900 are toll. Guess who pays the rest? The highway system loses money everyday.

[chaz]

Amtrak is subsidized heavily by the gov't/tax dollars. if it lowers prices guess who pays. kind of like metro. metro loses $ on every trip.

One of the main problems here is the stupid government doesn't know how to run a railroad.  Lots of Amtrak routes are profitable...but in order to placate congress they have to keep open a bunch of routes that lose all the money.  It's stupid politics. 

The Acela alone is profitable enough to make up for the losses taken on many of the routes, but not all of them.

Edit:  By my quick calculation eliminating the 14 lowest performing routes and amtrack would break even.  Of course you need to balance this with ridership...some of those 14 are very under-used, some not as much.  The point is there is a road to sustainability for Amtrak if they balanced the business aspect AND the service aspect.

[ggw]

People also have a skewed opinion of Amtrak in this area because it's outrageously over priced. You can buy tickets in other parts of the country for DIRT cheap, I guess they need to milk the area of the country where they can actually make money.

That's totally true.  The Acela is far and away the most profitable line and underwrites losses.  Less than a handful (literally, 4) of Amtrak lines actually make money.

http://www.brookings.edu/research/interactives/2013/AmtrakRoutes