Here is why high speed rail in the US and Canada is stupid.
NY to SF: 2500 miles.
London to Moscow: 1500.
People who live between NY and SF: 313 million.
People who live between London and Moscow: 731 million.
The economics of it are completely backward, and you can't take high speed rail from London all the way to Moscow.
We'd be much better off to start by improving I80 and just wait for driverless cars (busses) to go 250 mph.
Also, yes, high speed rail in the sprawl (Boswash) makes sense, but it doesn't really make much sense anywhere else except for maybe Seattle to LA. Linking the coasts with high speed rail is probably pretty silly unless you can start getting close to 350-450 mph.
You don't have to link NY to SF. High-speed rail in the U.S. makes the most sense for linking the mega-regions. Chicago to Montreal is less than twice the distance from Bordeaux to Strasbourg and hits much bigger cities along the way. Birmingham, AL to Raleigh, NC is about the same distance hits similar sized metro areas.
Also: the fact that cars are driverless doesn't change the physics of 250 mph cars...
Actually driverless cars experience much different physics... Driverless cars can squeeze together much tighter drastically reducing wind resistance. Even the lead car will experience less drag because of vacuum effect. 250 MPH cars also need much straighter roads and allow for greater traffic flow which changes the economic modelling for highways leading to shorter journeys. Driverless cars also allow for greater degrees of sharing meaning that you'd only need a few 250 MPH cars shared amongst many individuals.
Of course you don't have to link NY and SF but that's what the map shows, well to be fair the map shows, NY to LA.
The rolling resistance of a rubber tire at 250 miles an hour is comically ridiculous. The Bugatti Veyron gets about 3 miles per gallon at 250 miles per hour.
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Here is why high speed rail in the US and Canada is stupid.
The economics of it are completely backward, and you can't take high speed rail from London all the way to Moscow.We'd be much better off to start by improving I80 and just wait for driverless cars (busses) to go 250 mph.
Also, yes, high speed rail in the sprawl (Boswash) makes sense, but it doesn't really make much sense anywhere else except for maybe Seattle to LA. Linking the coasts with high speed rail is probably pretty silly unless you can start getting close to 350-450 mph.
You don't have to link NY to SF. High-speed rail in the U.S. makes the most sense for linking the mega-regions. Chicago to Montreal is less than twice the distance from Bordeaux to Strasbourg and hits much bigger cities along the way. Birmingham, AL to Raleigh, NC is about the same distance hits similar sized metro areas.
Also: the fact that cars are driverless doesn't change the physics of 250 mph cars...
Actually driverless cars experience much different physics... Driverless cars can squeeze together much tighter drastically reducing wind resistance. Even the lead car will experience less drag because of vacuum effect. 250 MPH cars also need much straighter roads and allow for greater traffic flow which changes the economic modelling for highways leading to shorter journeys. Driverless cars also allow for greater degrees of sharing meaning that you'd only need a few 250 MPH cars shared amongst many individuals.
Of course you don't have to link NY and SF but that's what the map shows, well to be fair the map shows, NY to LA.
The rolling resistance of a rubber tire at 250 miles an hour is comically ridiculous. The Bugatti Veyron gets about 3 miles per gallon at 250 miles per hour.
And the map shows a lot more than just NYC to LA.
Seattle-LA isn't really viable. Seattle-Portland certainly is though, but it has the Cascades service doing 90mph.
High speed rail wouldn't be primarily for 2,500 mile trips. It's also super inconvenient to drive across the country on the insterstate system.