For myself it is 1000 miles (1600km) to drive to visit my brother in Texas, but I certainly wouldnât holiday there willingly.
For holiday, I would probably drive 400 miles (643 km) to holiday on the my closest USA beach. Itâs a tad closer to drive 200 miles (321 km) to a Mexican beach though.
I believe you're highlighting OOP's point. There are no fast trains to take throughout most of the USA, so you either fly or drive. I technically could take the 422 Texas Eagle train from Phoenix (Maricopa) to Dallas, but it would take 31 hours. Flying takes 2 hours.
I do fully support building high-speed rail in the USA, however, I will not likely see high speed rail here until 2030 or later.
I was being a bit tongue in cheek of course, but understood OPs point more as a typical example of "US yuge, Europe small", whereas the distance Berlin to Rome is about roughly the same 1000mile trip by car (or by train or by plane) and it's not even a long trip within the EU.
And you if you do take that trip by train, I advise bringing so fresh clothes as you mightvend up stranded somewhere. Lol
Last time I tool a high speed in Germany I ended up at a hotel sowhere because I missed the last connection.
You sure about that number? I recall doing the math a couple years back that London-Warsaw was about that or a little over. Iâd figure Berlin-Rome as more like 400-600 miles.
(But could easily be around 1000 kilometers through - unit confusion?)
I looked it up on gmaps and it came around 1500 km for the shortest route. Berlin - Munich is already 600km and remember Rome isn't in the north of Italy
Perhaps this is a case where olâ Mercator struck again, stretching Europe (which is at high latitude) in the east-west direction. Or just not thinking in the north-side direction properly, at least I tend to inventory geography ânorth of the alpsâ and âsouth of the alpsâ in separate mental âbins,â if that makes any sense.
Try 2050 at best in California. Everywhere else nationally one party is opposed on essentially ideological grounds and the other doesnât view it as worth spending political capital on.
Meanwhile when you actually give people -a train-, just normal speed, theyâre instantly popular. Heck, itâs might almost be a case of schedule it and they will come, and the existing ones donât lack for riders. I suspect thereâs a heck of a lot of hidden demand. I just wish one served the city my relatives lived in. Itâs sooo much nicer then driving.
(Why are we not just sticking an extra coach or two on the end of the train during busier periods? We still universally have locomotive-hauled trains with individual separate passenger cars with couplings that take maybe a minute tops per car like you guys used to. Heck, why arenât we increasing capacity slightly by just lengthening trains, almost all of them the locomotive wouldnât have any trouble hauling an extra car or two.)
About the 30âs thing - no. There was only one route on one railroad is the US that scheduled at 100 mph (160 kph) - but trains running behind schedule in many places with a fast engine often did sprints to 100 mph (160 kph) where the track allowed to get back on schedule. Sometimes as much as 110 mph, or so the legend goes, but the last generation of US express passenger steam were all capable of 100 mph on straighter sections of track.
That requires a one-piece cast steel locomotive frame though, the riveted frames they replaced would need far too much maintaince for those speeds to be a good idea even occasionally in service. Not that they couldnât mind you, just that they couldnât withstand doing it  repeatedly without needing an overhaul.I actually âthinkâ the cast steel locomotive frame was only used in the US through the end of steam, so frequent 100 mph sprints may have been largely a US (and Canadian, over here itâs all just one big network across both countries that even share the same freight car pool) through the late 50âs.Â
About the 30âs thing - no. There was only one route on one railroad is the US that scheduled at 100 mph (160 kph)
I wasn't just thinking about the US. The British, Italians and Germans all managed authenticated speeds of 200kph in the 1930s. There are claims that such a speed was also achieved in the US but they didnât accurately measure their runs.Â
That they certainly did. I was referring to regular scheduled passenger service.
It seems the US simply never bothered to take a record candidate locomotive and hook it up to an instrumented test car and try a record run. I can think off the top of my head at least 3 classes that âmightâ have been able to capture the record if they had bothered. One of them legend has it reached 140 mph - but who knows if thatâs true or not, it would have been either crewâs estimate or stopwatch and mile post if it was, and it more likely never happened.
And now US trains are slower than they were in the 1930s. The trains that follow the route of the Twin Cities Hiawatha take an extra hour for example.Â
Well in Germany everything above 160kph is by definition high speed rail that has additional steps required if you want to certify a new passenger train mainly to do with automatic signaling and train control for safety reasons (PZB, LZB, and in the future ETCS) Regional trains like the new battery and hydrogen trains only go up to 160kph.
I've used 200kph in my example because it is relatively easy to achieve for countries not familiar with high speed rail and easy to calculate distance with speed and time.
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u/b3nsn0wrecovering from temporarily embarrassed future american syndrome3d ago
i think it's genuinely having access your car at the destination, rather than being stuck with a rental, that makes the yanks take ridiculous road trips. almost all of their cities are car dependent as fuck and if you live in your car like that you wanna keep things nice.
Are there flights that only go 200 miles? There is talk to ban super-short distance flights in the EU as they make no sense financially and environmentally.
OOP complained about europeans being annoying for having public transportation. To me it sounded like they are complaining about the longer distances, which is not the case though, you guys just never cared to implement a decent cross state public transport system.
400 miles or more I'd seriously consider flying. In Europe or Japan though I'd take a train. A train in US is very expensive (more expensive than flying) and usually doesn't go where you want to go.
I would probably drive 400 miles (643 km) to holiday on the my closest USA beach. Itâs
As someone born in Italy, the thought of being so far from the sea is hard to truly grasp.
How common is it in the US to find people who have never seen the sea?
About 40% of Americans live by the âCoastâ which often includes both the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans (obviously), as well as the Great Lakes (strange)
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u/bopeepsheep 3d ago
I'm so confused by this: what relevance has the 1000 miles? Do they want to holiday in the Atlantic Ocean?