Today, it's time to ride North America's only sorta high speed line, the Amtrak Northeast Regional, on the sorta high speed original Acela, all the way from Boston to Washington.
It's all relative: women next to me happy how cheap (!) tickets are compared to their onward travel to northern England. Also marvelling at the #HighSpeedRail..
Admittedly, on train experience is (almost) as good as ICE
https://fediscience.org/
Quite remarkable how terrible the experience of taking the #Eurostar is. I like taking trains but this like many of the disadvantages of flying (expensive, lots of queues, security checks, very little legroom) and not very many of the advantages (speed).
People can't imagine a future where we banned cars, but how many failed techbro propellerheaded ideas to stop #globalWarming do you need to see before it's hard to imagine one where we didn't?
Cars aren't quite half of our #greenhouseGas emissions, but given the progress in other sectors, they will be soon. Further, daily consumption of fossil fuels and road construction bankroll the lobbyists who control our govt. to prevent collective #climateAction. Cars keep us flying because we can't build #highSpeedRail without urbanism in the source and destination cities, where you rent a car at the airport because #transit and the bike network fail to connect you to the last mile. #BanCars
I’m currently waiting in line to buy beer, floating ~20’ above the ground, AT ~190 FREAKING MPH. WHY CAN’T THE USA HAVE NICE THINGS?!?!? #HighSpeedRail#Spain#Civilisation
Oh and did I mention it cost about USD55 and will take ~2 hours? I’m going about the same distance as SF -> LA; it’s literally NUTS that CA hasn’t just cut all the BS and red tape, muzzled the airlines and their fossil fuel cronies, and doubled down on the CA HSR already. #HighSpeedRail#UninhibitedRanting
Spain’s high-speed trains aren’t just efficient, they have transformed people’s lives.
The country has managed to build itself the longest high-speed rail network in Europe and the second longest in the world, now spanning approximately 4,000km (and still expanding).
"A fiasco like [the UK's] HS2 could never happen here – our fast train network is so popular that no Spanish government would dare give up on it".
So in addition to cluttering up low earth orbit, wrecking terrestrial astronomy, creating the potential for a Kessler Syndrome cascade which could close access to space, and creating a national security nightmare, Starlink internet access is a climate catastrophe using up to 30 times more carbon footprint per internet subscriber than land based internet.
I wish it were more yellow, but grateful that there are so many options. Even though the high-speed network towards Toulouse, Brussels, Vienna, Ljubljana, Prague, Bratislava ... could clearly be improved.
With billions of pounds already spent, the promise of a high-speed line connecting central London to the northern cities of Manchester and Leeds looks doomed, as the UK government prepares its second program of project cuts in as many years.
The project has become a huge embarrassment for a nation that once prided itself as the world's railway pioneer.
Coordinating Minister for Maritime and Investment Luhut B Pandjaitan revealed that the Jakarta-Bandung-Surabaya fast train project will pass through Solo and Jogja.
Unlike the classic children’s song, however, you won’t be able to ride it with useless … I mean, without paying.
Well, that's a new one. I'm on a train to Carlisle which has been stuck at Preston for a while (after a load of people got on here), and was already overcrowded because the train before it was cancelled. They’ve just announced that the train is overcrowded and they will not let the train move until some people leave the train. So now everyone is looking at everyone else, wondering who is going to move.
WHY are we underfunding railways to the point where this is even an option?
@helenczerski I just got back from riding trains across Spain... it was incredible how efficient, easy and reliable they were. So much better than air travel. Why can't we have nice public transit things in the US? (Rhetorical) #publictransit#highspeedrail#publicinfrastructure
Dear Guardian reader. As you wring your hands in despair because HS2 is no longer planned to link London with "The North", just try and remember that it was never ever intended to.
@CloudyMrs Most people from the south of #England think of Manchester / Leeds as 'The North', and as the Lake District and Northumberland as 'The Far North'. They've little idea how much further even Glasgow or Edinburgh are, let alone Aberdeen or Inverness.
The Four Horsemen will have saddled-up long before an English #government would even think about a high speed rail that involves even the south of #Scotland.
The 870 km Rail Baltica project, which is due for completion in 2030, will connect the capitals of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia with Warsaw and the rest of Europe, allowing trains to run uninterrupted.
However, the project is symbolic as well as physical.
For the EU, it’s a statement about the Baltic states’ return to Europe and their decoupling from their Soviet past.
I liked @RM_Transit's new video on California High-Speed Rail. While I'd heard this point before, he re-emphasizes how much California is trying to invent HSR from scratch its own way, rather than learning from countries who have been much more successful at it for years. Sounds like some other projects in California to me. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ajvi7efEUY#HighSpeedRail#Trains#California
Shinkansen #1 is also the fastest, a JR East E5 Hayabusa that will go all the way from Tokyo to the southern end of Hokkaido in just under 4 hours, topping out at 320 km/hr (199 mph). #AllTheShinkansens2023#HighSpeedRail
And this all builds on the planned line to #Queretaro! That line is a great start, but it should go farther, because this has potential to connect Mexico like never before.
Trying to plan work trip to #Bergen for meeting and not for the first time, I'm left wondering why exactly the train connection between major Scandinavian cities is so awful ..?
Spain to Portugal by train: Is a Madrid to Lisbon high-speed line on the horizon?
Spain’s national rail operator has recently launched new routes connecting to major cities in France.
Various media outlets have reported that it is now launching services linking Madrid and Lisbon, and the northwest Spanish port city of A Coruña with Porto.