Why not just take the High Speed Rail and get there in 45 minutes instead?
US High Speed Rail:
Hey now, don’t knock the Big Boy. He could reach 80mph, that’s much faster than most of our rail in the US.
Oh, I’m just kidding. I’ve only gotten to see 4014 up close once but man is it impressive.
back when America knew how to dominate the rail scene
The US still dominates freight rail.
When this baby hits 88Mph, you’re gonna see some serious shit
Eastwood, Clint Eastwood.
Nice to meet you Mr Estwoud.
idk if I want to ride a train that goes at Mach 2.3 personally.
I’ll wait until it’s proven, then I’ll go find a g suit.
That’s gonna be a while. Current speed record from what I see for passenger trains is around 350 miles per hour. The quick math I did for getting from NYC to Miami in 45 minutes needed like 1,700mph. From what I’m seeing even the experimental stuff right now doesn’t get above 400mph.
SR-71 has entered the chat.
Laughs in supercruise
Concorde is a tailless aircraft design with a narrow fuselage permitting four-abreast seating for 92 to 128 passengers, an ogival delta wing, and a droop nose for landing visibility. It is powered by four Rolls-Royce/Snecma Olympus 593 turbojets with variable engine intake ramps, and reheat for take-off and acceleration to supersonic speed. Constructed from aluminium, it was the first airliner to have analogue fly-by-wire flight controls. The airliner had transatlantic range while supercruising at twice the speed of sound for 75% of the distance.[5]
The fastest transatlantic airliner flight was from New York JFK to London Heathrow on 7 February 1996, aided by a 175 mph (282 km/h) tailwind, by the British Airways G-BOAD, in 2 hours, 52 minutes, 59 seconds from take-off to touchdown.[227] On 13 February 1985, a Concorde charter flight flew from London Heathrow to Sydney in a time of 17 hours, 3 minutes and 45 seconds, including refuelling stops.[228][229]
Supercruise is sustained supersonic flight of a supersonic aircraft without using afterburner. Many supersonic military aircraft are not capable of supercruise and can maintain Mach 1+ flight only in short bursts with afterburners. Aircraft such as the SR-71 Blackbird are designed to cruise at supersonic speed with afterburners enabled.
Some fighter jets are capable of supercruise but only at high altitudes and in a clean configuration, so the term may imply “a significant increase in effective combat speed with a full weapons load over existing types”.[1] One of the pre-eminent military examples of supercruise is the F-22 Raptor, for which supercruise was defined as “the ability to cruise at speeds of one and a half times the speed of sound or greater without the use of afterburner for extended periods in combat configuration.”[2]
One of the best-known examples of an aircraft capable of supercruise, and the only notable non-military example, was the Concorde. Due to its long service as a commercial airliner, the Concorde holds the record for the most time spent supersonic; more than all other western aircraft combined.[3]
Laughs in mach 3.2
Try to keep up.
The SR-71 has the speed, but Concorde has the endurance. :3
Fuckin wheee.
Just railgun the Europeans across the country
Speed doesn’t hurt. Acceleration does. As long as it’s made to accelerate reasonably slowly to reach that speed, you’ll be fine.
I looked at taking a train from Albuquerque to Denver for a concert, the trip takes 2-3 days and goes from Albuquerque toto Chicago to Denver and one way cost more than a round trip flight. For reference, it is a 7ish hour drive.
Their long hauls are definitely more vacation based, where the ride is part of the journey - and if you’re not into that then I get how you feel. Amtrak has been doing a great job at refocusing on corridors. The east coast obviously, then they’re working hard on a few key ones like:
- Minneapolis to Chicago
- Portland-Seattle-Vancouver
- California corridor
- Eventually, here’s hoping, the Frontrange: Pueblo-Colorado Springs-Denver-Fort Collins-Cheyenne.
Those are all shorter trips that don’t make much sense to fly with how short it is, and with a few daily trips makes traveling between those cities much easier. Personally those are much better usages of Amtrak’s time. I’ve taken the Portland-Seattle-Vancouver one multiple times and it’s so much nicer than driving - but it’s max 4 hours.
I wish they’d upgrade their long haul routes to go faster. There’s one from SLC to SF I’m interested in, but it takes 18 hours, vs 11 by car or 2 by plane. If it was faster than driving, I’d consider it to avoid the airport.
I don’t blame them for focusing on the easier trips though.
Same, but with the limited funding I get why. Shorter trips like that make money, long hauls don’t - and since they don’t own the tracks they can’t even upgrade them or begin to do anything. I will say 18 is a lot (especially in a coach seat), but there is a positive of not having to drive. I usually take my steam deck and just zone out. Overnights though are tough in coach, for that you really have to want to be there.
Yeah, if I want to go anywhere interesting, it would be an overnight trip, with kids. A sleeping room is way too expensive, so it’s a nonstarter. If it was 3x the speed, it would probably be fine, especially if they left in the morning instead of the evening.
So yeah, the only train I take is the commuter, and only to go to the airport because there’s no connection from the train to my work (there’s a way to get there, but the trip would take 2 hours each way). The commuter can’t go very fast because it has to stop every 5-10 miles, but it’s fine since it goes about as fast as a car.
So yeah, here’s hoping Amtrak can make enough on the east coast to be able to upgrade the west coast.
Their long hauls are definitely more vacation based, where the ride is part of the journey
I get that, but I was looking for an alternative to driving 14 hours round trip. Even if the trip took 7 hours each way, I am not driving it. But to go from 7 hours to 45 hours is insane. For a show on the 5th of November in Denver I have to leave Albuquerque on the 3rd, then leave Denver on the 6th to get back home on the 8th. $171 for the cheap seats each way.
I live near SLC and go get to San Francisco is about 18 hours, and that’s a straight shot. Coach costs about $120, each way, which is about the same price as a non-budget airline. There’s only one train each day and it runs from midnight to about 6PM the next day.
By car it’s about 11 hours and about 2 hours by airplane.
So it’s:
- slower
- not cheaper, perhaps more expensive if you don’t mind budget flights
- less flexible - one train/day in most cases
There are tons of places I just can’t get to, like Las Vegas.
If I was retired or something when spending more time was totally fine, I’d consider taking the train. But as it stands, it’s just not a practical option unless the train is the destination.
are you in the same school as this picard maneuver guy?
This is actually pretty similar to what some coworkers visiting from EU wanted to do.
They were here on a two week work trip and I asked them what they were doing for their weekend. It was something like “We rented a car and are going to go to New Orleans, then to Nashville, up to New York City, over to the Grand canyon, and maybe San Francisco if we have time before we head back to the office”
I had to explain that the state we were in was larger than their country and they couldn’t cover that much ground in two days even if they only drove and didn’t stop once.
We had a good laugh and then just did a hike on Saturday :)
Edit : “in Europe 100km is a long distance and in the US 100 years is a long time”. Forget where I heard that but it seems accurate
I once saw a post from an American guy visiting family in Germany. They borrowed him a car so he could visit other family about 400KM away.
The family that owned the car spend an entire day getting it checked out by a mechanic, making sure all the fluids where fine, getting the tire pressure just right, etc.
He thought it was pretty funny because he drove double that distance every week just to go to work.
That is a British saying about Americans vs. Brits.
upvote for Gulf of Mexico
Ahem, it’s the Gulf of America. Please get your facts right
why is this being downvoted, have y’all never heard of sarcasm?
Sorry, I should have tagged it properly.
Warning! Sarcasm ahead.
<sarcasm>Ahem, it’s the Gulf of America. Please get your facts right</sarcasm>
Edit: Jerboa eating me tags. Let us try it this way:
<sarcasm>Ahem, it’s the Gulf of America. Please get your facts right</sarcasm>
Edit2: <p contenteditable=“true”>while we’re at it, why not try <mark>further</mark></p>
Edit3: Thanks for the gold, kind <del>strangler</del> <ins>stranger</ins>
It’s a lazy joke that the other person already made better.
The sarcasm/joke is obvious, it just wasn’t funny.
Let’s call it the gulf of middle earth
Nope, it’s the Gulf of America. He said so. Now quit your anti-US retorics lest you be deported.
It’s pronounced Gulf of Mexico
Is this one of those weird maps with the equator going through Florida?
Gondor is going to need a lot more aid to move that gulf to the middle…
Only if marlago is designated americas rectum.
Palm Beach is full of [rich] assholes so I would say this tracks.
Urectum
Damn near killed em.
Silly! The game you play when the facts keep changing and the rules don’t matter
<blockquote>🎵 Nobody call it Gulf of America, but rules don’t matter, no 🎵</blockquote> <p>Bakon</p>
I sadly see this all the time unironically. Met a German family who arrived in North Carolina with plans to go to Disney Land. Not World. Land
“Isn’t California just on the other side of the country?”
Yeah it is
How do people not check driving times in this modern age?
America is pretty unique in size. If you’re used to shorter trips even overestimating wouldn’t be half the drive through america. Especially Europeans as a long drive is anything over 20m when its measured in hours they’re considering booking accommodations for sleep and such. The perception of time is incredibly different.
Unique in size? Lol the US is big, there are lots of other big countries
It’s the second biggest “Western” country. It’s about twice as big as the EU, about as big as the whole of Europe with about the same population, so it’s mostly empty in the middle.
The obverse would be an American who wants to go to Europe, start out in Madrid, lunch in Copenhagen and fly back from Istambul.
But the US isn’t unique in size. It’s right next to two big countries, with Canada being even bigger, Europeand are familiar with Russia that’s the biggest country in the world, it’s not like people don’t know about China, Brazil and how they’re yuge…
Technically the US is unique in size. Name another nation that is 9.8 million km2. Canada is 10 million km2,Russia is 17.1 million km2, China is is 9.6 million…
So to say it is ‘unique in size’ is technically correct, the best kind of correct!
Hah well you got me there
Sure but the context of the discussion is Europe vs US
That’s why I’m saying “second biggest”, that doesn’t mean it’s unique.
European here, although our countries are smaller. 20 mins is quite obviously a short drive.
UK is pretty small but it still takes 7 Hours to get from Glasgow to london and I can’t imagine anyone booking overnight accommodation for that drive. That’s two major cities with 100% motorway/freeway driving, I haven’t even brought up Cornwall.
I drive 5h for family within England on a monthly basis.
Your comment is naive.
Eh id still be inclined to stay over in Manchester or something to break that up, especially on holiday.
Canada is as wide… And in a sense longer because everything is so sparse.
The way I try to communicate it is to ask them to imagine someone taking a vacation to the whole EU, because America is much closer in scale to that
A 2 hour drive in Miami will get you to…north Miami
And 50$ in tolls lol
I remember driving out of Miami and even after an hour on the highway there were still exit signs for 10000th street or some shit like that. The American sprawl is difficult for Europeans to comprehend.
Conversely, I, as an American who had the opportunity to spend a few months in Germany, was surprised at how close all the countries were.
Great culture in all the places I went (Brussels and Prague were my two standout favorites!) Traveling was hella cheap. The food was fire everywhere I went. The architecture was INCREDIBLE. And the knowledge that you could go to the hospital for less than $100 was nuts. Don’t even get me started on how legitimately cool it is to sit in a 1000 year old pub.
I didn’t want to come back. I nearly cried when I got the return flight info.
It still shocks me to tell people “Yeah, I lived in Germany for a bit and some weekends we would fuck off to France.”
The borders of European countries are great because there’s all this security infrastructure that they’ve built but then they don’t use any of it. There’s always just a bunch of ballads and you have to drive around little security checkpoints but there’s never anyone around.
My personal favourite is Geneva which is kind of just an extended bit of Switzerland because the city was already there, but really by any logical sense it should be in France. So they deal with that by basically just ignoring it, and people just pop to and fro all the time.
There are often crossings where the infrastructure is a road-side sign. Interstate crossings at state borders are often more significant.
I submitted a job application once to Freiburg. One of the main reasons was that if I’m unhappy with the food selection, both France and Switzerland is something like 20kms away
I loved Prague too. Had a local guide that took me to cool places, I drank a lot. 👍
Had a friend from SE Asia that wanted to visit me in Halifax, Nova Scotia. She found a flight to Canada alright. To VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA. She asked if I could come pick her up if I wasn’t too busy.
Lol.
Sure, I’ll be there in 3 days, you’ll probably want to get some food while you wait.
3? I had a few crewmates cross the country in about 5 and they said that was a gruelling task that they should have slowed down for.
If you go through the US, Google Maps tells me about 56 hours, or 18-19 hours/day if you’re doing it in 3. If you go through Canada only, add about 3 hours. I think Google Maps estimates are a bit generous on time esp. if you’re comfortable exceeding the speed limit a bit, so maybe you could do it in 50 hours.
It’s doable in 3, but it wouldn’t be fun at all. I’ve done 14+ hours driving in a day (so 4 days?), and it sucks, so yeah, 5 might be a bit too much as well.
The most I’ve done continuously is 12. No stops but for gas, visiting my GF at college decades ago.
I’ve done 18 with the kids in the car. We made it to Disney at sun up and I lost the first day being to tired to go to the damn park. The kids slept overnight, but my wife and I were cooked.
I’ve done 14 fairly often but doing that every day would suck. I’m usually fine the next day (I do all the driving because I’d otherwise get carsick), but I don’t think I’d be fine for 3 days.
In America, 100 years is a long time
In Europe, 100 miles is a long distanceTf is a mile, bruv? Don’t come in 'ere with these nonsensical made up freedom units
Miles originated in Britain, so talk to them about their made-up nonsense.
At least they were eventually willing to give up the imperial system. I still don’t understand why Americans never got on board with metric; it’s so much easier.
Just watched a video which explains a few things.
Time zones start in UK because of some decent reasoning. France was also a contender for where timezones start for the same kinds of reasoning but conceded it in agreement that UK adopts the new metric system they created
Yeah, 'Muricans be like “B-but… the Brits…”
Like, yeah. They moved on. They evolved, changed their ways. USians hanging on to legacy units
If I remember my conversions right then a mile is 5280 kilometers. I hope that helps explain why Europeans would fear such a distance!
Tf. Why would anyone have a unit for that
“A benpu is 327 meters!”
…wait a minute… am I being made a fool of? Can’t tell, cuz I don’t comprehend dumb units. I’d legit buy that as a real thing, given how stupid those tend to be
A US customary mile is 5280 US customary feet. 1 US customary foot is 12 US customary inches. 1 US customary inch is 25.4mm. So a US customary mile is 1609344mm, exactly. It derives from the roman “mille passus”, literally 1000 paces, where a pace is the distance between two impacts of the left (or right) foot of a Roman soldier on the march. Quite a few other cultures used a “mile” of some sort even after the fall of Rome, for example the old British imperial mile was 1760 British imperial yards, one British imperial yard predated the definition of the meter but was most precisely measured to be 0.914398415m, so the British imperial mile was 1609341.21mm. Other culture’s miles varied even more than this.
When I was in college at Eastern New Mexico, which is about 45 minutes west of Amarillo Texas, a couple friends, both from New England, had the bright idea of driving down to the gulf over a 4 day weekend.
I cautioned them against the idea, trying to explain Texas was bigger than they could imagine. Three hours into the trip we got a motel room in some hole in the wall town and went back to school the next morning.
What? It takes 24 hours to drive from the Canadian border to Mexico border. Texas is about 770 miles at its widest, that’s a breezy 10-12 hour drive doing the speed limit or just over.
You’re assuming no traffic in major cities. I’ve gone from close to the Louisiana border to new Mexico and it took about 16 hours.
Do most cities not have bypasses? In Canada even most small towns have a bypass so you avoid the traffic lights.
It’s mostly for the semi traffic, the stopping and stopping ruins the roads, so they have a highway going around town to avoid that.
Those highways are often very congested too. It can take like 2 hours just to drive through Houston, even using the loops/beltways
I guess, but arguably you would only hit one in the day, and the chances of it being during rush hour is slim, can always plan better around that stuff too. Or take secondary highways. There’s not only a single highway going places.
Even during off-hours?
I went on a cross Canada car drive in the early 2000s. We left from Sudbury Ontario to make it to the west coast in BC. We took our time, sight seeing and making many stops along the way. Ten days later we made it to Vancouver.
The best part was that on our sixth day, we ran into a friend in Medicine Hat, Alberta. He had left Kapuskasing, Ontario the day before and was expecting to make it to Vancouver in about 60 hours with non stop driving. His eyes were so blood shot and he was literally shaking from all the caffeine drinks, pills and coffee he had been taking. He had some strangers with him that he had picked up as hitch hikers and he said they were keeping him awake.
We worried about him the whole time but he called us two days later to say he made it. We caught up with him three days later.
West Texas alone is an 8 hours between Las Cruces and San Antonio, and it’s the same damn rock and shrub for the entire 8 hours.
We were headed Portales to Corpus Christi, which according to Apple Maps is about 9 1/2 hours. We did not have Apple Maps then, we had Rand McNally. So at best it would have taken us 11 hours. And yes everything looked the same.
I live in Arkansas and went on vacation to South Padre Island a few years ago. It’s a 16 hour drive one way.
I grew up near Seattle and now live near Salt Lake City. The drive is 14 hours one way and I’ve done that trip at least a dozen times.
Their transportation:
Shout out the 1 hour 45 minute drive from JFK to just over the bridge into Jersey
Holy crap, just shoot me out a cannon, I’ll get there sooner or die, either is preferable
“Would you like to try this alternate route that saves you negative 13 minutes and negative $5.44?”
Fly into Newark. Nobody in nj uses JFK or laguardia.
In OP’s image they “land” in NYC and drive to Miami. You would drive the route I posted to leave NYC.
could have this if politicians didn’t fight high speed rail so much
I’m a fan of high speed rail too, but I also wonder if it’s ever going to be comparable to flying for long distances like this.
Like, even traveling in a direct line on a plane (which averages 600mph, or 2-3x the average speed of high speed rail), it still takes 6 hours from NYC to LA.
Anything under about 500 km is better by train. While the train is slower, once you count getting to and from the airport and in and out of the plane, you’re still faster overall. Above that the plane will usually be faster. If you take the environmental cost into account, the train always wins.
There’s a direct train from Beijing to Kunming that’s 11 hours, 1700 miles.
NYC to LA would be ~50% more, so you could do a high-speed sleeper.
But no, at that distance, flying is probably better.
Keep in mind that trains don’t require extensive security checks and checking in times though.
trains don’t require extensive security checks
[laughs in chinese]
checking in times though.
In the US, I regularly caught domestic flights arriving <1hr before departure, I don’t think a 18 hour high speed train can compete with a 6 hour flight.
Then again, I just looked at the high speed trains from Beijing to Kunming for the next few days, and while none of the trains are booked solid, a lot of business and first class seats are sold out or <10 left.
Meanwhile a flight goes for less than half the price and takes <4 hours.
So IDK why that route even exists, let alone why anyone would choose it over a plane, but apparently they do.
Do people take the train for the entire trip, or do most get on/off as it goes? I have used trains that cross the entire country (UK) before but never used them from start to end.
Yes, I hadn’t thought of that.
Its difficult to get off the plane half way, though not impossible.
Keep in mind that trains don’t require extensive security checks and checking in times though.
pfft tell that to avalanche and jessie rasberry
As soon as Elon Musk builds his Hyperloop, we’ll be traveling from NYC to LA in just a few hours. /s
I’ve never considered myself claustrophobic, but the mockups of Hyperloop I’ve seen freak me out a little.
Not claustrophobic at all, but the idea of entering that engineering system has me bugging.
Honestly, if trains were 1/3 as fast as planes, I’d take them.
My family lives about 800 miles away (by car, less as the crow flies), which takes about 14 hours by car, 2.5 hours by plane, and 45 hours by train (36 moving time). To be fair, it covers more ground (almost 2x at ~1400 miles), but driving that same roite would only be ~22 hours. To make up for the extra distance, the train would need to go about twice the speed, so 120-150mph, to match driving, which is completely feasible. If I could do that trip via train in one day, I’d do it vs taking the plane.
I don’t think expecting trains to go 2-3x the speed of cars is unreasonable. I’d still probably take an airplane for longer trips, but anything within 1k miles or so should be reasonable to do by rail.
commercial planes are a bit subsonic, you’re asking for 300-400 km/h trains. high speed rail is like 200 km/h
Although it is true the definitions for high speed trains mention 200km/h, it is good to know many lines exist with 300km/h or above as speed limit (and the speed limit is regularly driven on these lines).
High speed rail is enough for medium size trips that I would normally drive. When driving isn’t feasible (more than 800 miles or so), I’d need faster than typical high speed rail.
There is a point where planes become the better choice and transcontinental is definitely one of them.
If only the train autistic people had took over the country instead of the nazi ones.
With the distances provided, flying would be faster than high speed rail. Even if there was a maglev train from NYC to Miami, I think the flight would still be faster unless there were major delays flying out.
Those trains would have to be supersonic though, to do it all in one day.
You’d need a train going 1100mph (3x faster than the fastest current train) to make Miami to Las Vegas in 2 hours, but sure.
For reference that’s like 1.5 times the speed of sound at sea level.
Oh look dear, the mach 1.5 train is going by again.
That looks like a fun gif, where’d ya get it?
It’s from an anime called Chainsaw Man.
Fun fact: This scene is from the aftermath of the first and only attack by the devil named Gun, who stands in as a metaphor for gun violence (not very subtle, but that’s the point)
Lol, in the manga I think it was crazier than this. There was just an immense scar across an entire continent in a straight line, as if a mile wide bulldozer just drove across everything. I don’t remember if it targeted a government official or not, but I vaguely
spoiler
remember control planting a piece of the gun devil as a lure.
More like you would have your eardrums sent into a different dimension.
Ah, a meme from a simpler time. Now the first thing I think of is how long the stay in Guantanamo Bay will be.
Out of curiosity, I put the route in Google Maps to see how long each leg would take. 20 hrs., 37 hrs., 5 hrs.
You really can’t experience everything if has to offer in just one day. I wish tourists could better understand.
If they make it all the way noon, I’d be surprised. Make a stop in Alligator Auschwitz.
My brother went to college in upstate NY in the 80’s and made friends with a girl who was born & raised in Manhattan. One weekend, in all seriousness, she suggested taking the subway to the Grand Canyon.
I bet I know who she voted for
in the 80’s what?
Or just save being put in an ICE facility and go visit Canada and not be put in an ICE facility.
Edit typo
