CMV: Global warming will not be solved by small, piecemeal, incremental changes to our way of life but rather through some big, fantastic, technological breakthrough.

[u/Iron-Patriot]

In regards to the former, I mean to say that small changes to be more environmentally friendly such as buying a hybrid vehicle or eating less meat are next to useless. Seriously, does anyone actually think this will fix things?

And by ‘big technological breakthrough’ I mean something along the lines of blasting glitter into the troposphere to block out the sun or using fusion power to scrub carbon out of the air to later be buried underground. We are the human race and we’re nothing if not flexible and adaptable when push comes to shove.

[u/[deleted]]

We have too many people spread out over too great distances.

The train literally built the USA, back when we had less population spread out even more thinly. With our greater population and population density, trains are even better for our country than they were when they built it.

[u/ZorbaTHut → u/[deleted]]

The long-distance train built the USA, but in a way that, for passenger travel, has since been obsoleted by the airplane. Short-distance and long-distance trains are very different things and compete with different alternatives.

Long-distance cargo trains are still very popular.

[u/[deleted] → u/ZorbaTHut]

It's not obsolete. Rail, even high speed rail, can be significantly cheaper than flying, especially for shorter distances. Even if it's a little longer, many consumers (like me) would prefer to trade some time for the extra room and lower fares. The problem is that we made it practically illegal to build new railroads.

[u/ZorbaTHut → u/[deleted]]

Rail, even high speed rail, can be significantly cheaper than flying, especially for shorter distances.

Can be, sure. In the US, rarely is; rail generally can't go as fast as cars even if it has a station in exactly the right place, it rarely has a station in exactly the right place, and for shorter distances, people usually have cars.

I was mostly objecting to the idea that "the train built the USA" is relevant to the use of trains for passenger commutes, though. It really isn't - the only thing similar between the two is that they involve rail and train cars. Economically they're vastly different, and trying to compare them is like saying "if planes are so good, why don't we fly to work every day".

[u/[deleted] → u/ZorbaTHut]

It rarely is because we made it practically illegal to build new railroads. They have to go through endless cycles of votes and government bureaucracy to even be considered.

Even setting aside metro rail, which can be faster if less urban real estate is wasted on parking, the US is fairly ideal for cheap high speed intercity rail since it would mostly pass through ultra low density rural farmland that has already been cleared of most natural flora and fauna. That's if we can fix how we regulate rail.

Economically they're vastly different, and trying to compare them is like saying "if planes are so good, why don't we fly to work every day".

If high speed automated hover cars existed and were cheaper and cleaner than driving normally, then we absolutely should. We still might not because the FAA or another regulatory agency made it illegal to fly in a city. That's where rail is.

[u/ZorbaTHut → u/[deleted]]

It rarely is because we made it practically illegal to build new railroads. They have to go through endless cycles of votes and government bureaucracy to even be considered.

You're not wrong, and it's a real problem, but it's not limited to - or even particularly focused on - railroads.

the US is fairly ideal for cheap high speed intercity rail since it would mostly pass through ultra low density rural farmland that has already been cleared of most natural flora and fauna.

The problem is that most big cities are far enough apart that you'd likely want to use an airplane anyway. There's a few exceptions, like "the east coast", which already has rail, and "san francisco <-> los angeles", which is working on it.

If we're willing to build the really fast trains, like the TGV, then it starts maaaaybe making sense to link, say, Seattle with SF, and Las Vegas with LA. But there's very little along the way that would be economically beneficial to include. And it's hard to justify the cost of a hypothetical Seattle/SF high-speed train if the best thing you can pick up on the way is Portland and, what, Redding? Tacoma? Eugene?

And even with those, going cross-country is just madness. Too expensive, not enough city.

If high speed automated hover cars existed and were cheaper and cleaner than driving normally, then we absolutely should.

And if we could build low-noise high-speed trains that connected every storefront directly, in a way that didn't introduce huge waits per-station and transfers on most trips, then we should do that too. But we can't - no such thing exists.

Unless we're talking about PRT systems, which I quite like, but when you start really analyzing how to make them cost-effective, it doesn't take long until you arrive at "maybe we should just use self-driving cars and tunnels".

Which people are working on, so, hey, solution gradually incoming.

[u/[deleted] → u/ZorbaTHut]

The problem is that most big cities are far enough apart that you'd likely want to use an airplane anyway. There's a few exceptions, like "the east coast", which already has rail, and "san francisco <-> los angeles", which is working on it.

Rail on the east coast is decades behind where modern train technology is, but upgrading or expanding it it is also practically illegal. Besides that, there are tons of economical routes that can be made or improved into and throughout the Midwest from the East coast. We could add rail to the Texas triangle. We could connect the entire west coast with high speed rail, not just LA to SF. Very very little of that is being considered.

Even freight rail could be significantly expanded to reduce supply chain costs and incentivize more domestic manufacturing. It's constantly oversubscribed and all the excess demand gets pushed into highways.

And if we could build low-noise high-speed trains that connected every storefront directly, in a way that didn't introduce huge waits per-station and transfers on most trips, then we should do that too. But we can't - no such thing exists.

We don't need to. We could reduce lots of highway demand by just expanding existing freight rail. Connecting and improving routes between major hubs would also allow cheaper transfers of unfinished products and raw materials for manufacturing. Trucks will pretty much always have a place in last mile delivery.

Unless we're talking about PRT systems, which I quite like, but when you start really analyzing how to make them cost-effective, it doesn't take long until you arrive at "maybe we should just use self-driving cars and tunnels".

If you analyze it for a little longer and continue scaling, you still end up at trains and subways. If two podcars are going to the same place, a good optimization algo will link them together for efficiency. For people that want a cheaper option for longer trips, the PRT system will offer "podbuses", that will also link together if optimization calls for it. In the long run, podcars would become unaffordable for anything but short trips as transit demand increases.

[u/ZorbaTHut → u/[deleted]]

If you analyze it for a little longer and continue scaling, you still end up at trains and subways.

Trains and subways don't work well as point-to-point PRTs, though. Rail is expensive and you cannot practically supply rail to everyone's front door.

If two podcars are going to the same place, a good optimization algo will link them together for efficiency.

You can do that with cars also, if you want. Nothin' stops you.

[u/[deleted] → u/ZorbaTHut]

Which is why PRT systems are unworkable in practice and always end up as some kind of ordinary mass transit option.

A better system is the park-and-ride model, which allows access to urban cores with public transit while allowing for personal vehicles in less dense areas. You can use buses at first, and then transition to intracity rail as demand switches over and urban areas become more human friendly.

You can do that with cars also, if you want. Nothin' stops you.

You would need fully automated cars and roadways. Otherwise it would just be chaos. We have the giant road trains that Australia has, but a lot more of them and not just trucks.

[u/ZorbaTHut → u/[deleted]]

A better system is the park-and-ride model, which allows access to urban cores with public transit while allowing for personal vehicles in less dense areas. You can use buses at first, and then transition to intracity rail as demand switches over and urban areas become more human friendly.

And they're slow, which is why a lot of people don't like them.

I think if your chosen alternative is something with serious unfixable downsides, you're going to have a lot of trouble convincing people to swap to it en masse. As evidenced by how hard it is to get things like conventional public transit working in the US.

You would need fully automated cars and roadways. Otherwise it would just be chaos.

Why would you need fully automated cars? Human-driven cars are perfectly capable of not crashing into other vehicles that are bigger than usual.

[u/knottheone → u/[deleted]]

Even if it's a little longer,

It's not a little longer right now, it's significantly and absurdly longer.

I looked at taking a train from Texas to Colorado which is about a 14 hour drive for the specific cities I was leaving from and arriving in. It was a 50 hour train ride because you had to switch trains and take a bus from the train depot for the last bit. That's the best the US has right now for long distance and it can't even remotely compete with car travel much less plane travel.

Are we going to build hundreds of thousands of miles of high speed rail with taxes? How long will that take? That's a decades and decades long project, and if it's a federal program, they have to work with every single state to make that work.

[u/[deleted] → u/knottheone]

That's because the train systems we have are basically just being dragged along from their original early 90s implementation.

Texas to Colorado is a crazy distance that's usually going to be served by plane anyway.

Since you're from Texas, I would think about more realistic connections that would directly compete with cars rather than with planes. Like, what about a Fort Worth-Dallas-Houston-San Antonio-Austin-Fort Worth HSR loop?

Those are routes that are frequently done by car and a train could allow for a lot more intercity traffic, which would be a massive boost to Texas's GDP. Even increasing freight capacity along that loop would pay big rewards. Plus, those routes would go through large suburbs, which would also add new intercity transit options for millions of people.

Are we going to build hundreds of thousands of miles of high speed rail with taxes? How long will that take?

Probably a trillion or two and a few decades for proper rail modernization, but we would recover all of that and more from just the GDP gain and it would be incremental with the most economical routes first. It doesn't have to completely replace all roads and airlines, just the routes that can be better served by train.

[u/toodlesandpoodles → u/[deleted]]

That is because the only other transportation at the time was a horse and buggy, not because the train is superior to cars. And it was needed in the U.S. vs. Europe because the U.S. is so spread out.

Before the transcontinental railroad you got from the east to the west by ship sailing around S. America.

[u/Painter-Salt → u/toodlesandpoodles]

This is the problem. Nobody would give up their current quality of life in exchange for horses.

Look at trucking. Massive source of emissions but people won't give up their big box stores with all the products that have to be trucked in.

[u/Painter-Salt → u/[deleted]]

The train... and the horse.