NYC to Washington DC in 1 hour?

[Brian Ellis]

The rail distance between the two cities is 361 km. With the new AGV train, up to 800 passengers could be transported that distance in about 1 hour. The current time for an express train is about 2 h 50 min. The average time by air, including surface transport from and to city centres, check-in times and average flight delays is well over three hours.

This need no longer be a dream.

[Dr Mordrid]

The arguments against you'll see;

derailments would be massively fatal, both on the train and in the surrounding area

derailment for terrorism or just malicious behavior would be relatively easy to do

noise in surrounding residential areas

net cost, counting ever-increasing subsidies and liability insurance

etc.

[Rakido]

the real lame thing is that the Transrapid would be way faster and the technology is available for years now. I have no clue why they fail to sell it. It's used at the moment in China only and a route is planned from Munich to the Munich International Airport.

UK has plans to use it in the UK Ultraspeed line with a speed of around 500 km/h (310 m/h).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UK_Ultraspeed

This system would travel at considerably higher speeds (500 km/h) than similar high-speed rail (HSR) schemes which already exist and which are cheaper, like the French TGV (320 km/h). The system claims to use only 50% of the energy needed to power a comparable HSR alternative.[1]

Because of the vastly reduced journey times between the some of the UK's cities, there are considerable economic benefits to this proposal. Cities like Edinburgh and Glasgow would be able to function as one economic entity and enable greater cohesion between them. It would also do a lot to balance the traditional north-south England imbalance by encouraging businesses to locate outside London but still have good access to the services like Heathrow Airport.

There are also environmental benefits, because it would reduce the number of journeys taken by car and aeroplane between cities and this would in turn mean fewer greenhouse gas emissions from these modes of transport.[citation needed]

This system is also relatively inexpensive. The estimated cost would be £18 billion, which includes guideway construction and gliding stock. In comparison, an upgrade of the West Coast Main Line is due to cost £13 billion[citation needed]; and this was to enable trains to run at a mere 200 km/h, and doesn't address the problem of the present railway lines reaching their maximum capacity soon. Note however that the estimates of the cost for the Transrapid Ultraspeed project are merely preliminary.

The technology was rejected for future planning in the Government White Paper Delivering a Sustainable Railway published on July 24, 2007[2], however Ultraspeed claims that many allegations of this document are misleading or false, and successfully auditioned at the authors after the release.

[Brian Ellis]

The arguments against you'll see;

derailments would be massively fatal, both on the train and in the surrounding area

derailment for terrorism or just malicious behavior would be relatively easy to do

noise in surrounding residential areas

net cost, counting ever-increasing subsidies and liability insurance

etc.

Now, how's that for negativity?

It's predecessor, the TGV, has had how many derailments since it started up over 30 years ago? On high-speed lines, exactly three:
* 14 December 1992: TGV 920 from Annecy to Paris, operated by set 56, derailed at 270 km/h (168 mph) at Mâcon-Loché TGV station (Saône-et-Loire). A previous emergency stop had caused a wheel flat; the bogie concerned derailed while crossing the points at the entrance to the station. No one on the train was injured, but 25 passengers waiting on the platform for another TGV were slightly injured by ballast that was thrown up from the trackbed.
* 21 December 1993: TGV 7150 from Valenciennes to Paris, operated by set 511, derailed at 300 km/h (186 mph) at the site of Haute Picardie TGV station, before it was built. Rain had caused a hole to open up under the track; the hole dated from the First World War but had not been detected during construction. The front power car and four carriages derailed but remained aligned with the track. Of the 200 passengers, one was slightly injured.
* 5 June 2000: Eurostar 9073 from Paris to London, operated by sets 3101/2 owned by NMBS/SNCB, derailed at 250 km/h (155 mph) in the Nord-Pas de Calais region near Croisilles. The transmission assembly on the rear bogie of the front power car failed, with parts falling onto the track. Four bogies out of 24 derailed. Out of 501 passengers, seven were bruised[17] and others treated for shock.

Not one single fatal accident.

On ordinary lines (as used by other trains), there have been a total of 5 deaths, 2 due to a terrorist bomb and three due to obstructions on the lines.

I wouldn't mind betting that Amtrack has a far less enviable record of safety with passenger trains.

Because of the aerodynamics, there is comparatively less noise generation than with conventional trains, despite the higher speeds. Furthermore, the time that people are subjected to noise is very much reduced. Studies in France have shown that the TGV causes less nuisance to people living close to the line than those living close to an ordinary line. The noise at high speed is actually more of a whoosh than anything mechanical.

Yes, the capital cost is high, but it is economically viable, even at the low ticket cost in France. The last time I travelled from Paris to Lausanne by TGV (~500 km), the senior-citizen ticket cost me €96, first class, including a rather mediocre dinner.

I think that this refutes all your worries (other than the fact that it is made in France! )

[Brian Ellis]

the real lame thing is that the Transrapid would be way faster and the technology is available for years now. I have no clue why they fail to sell it. It's used at the moment in China only and a route is planned from Munich to the Munich International Airport.

UK has plans to use it in the UK Ultraspeed line with a speed of around 500 km/h (310 m/h).

The Transrapid is ideal for fairly short runs, like airport services which can benefit from the high acceleration, but the maglev power consumption is prohibitive for longer runs. This is why China is building a TGV-clone for Beijing>Shanghai and some other routes are planned.

[Dr Mordrid]

I'm not being overly negative, just realistic. Every time the idea of high speed rail comes up over here those are the cons that you hear. This isn't just from competing methods of transport but from environmentalists and others, but of course mainly from the NIMBY (not in my back yard) crowd. It's getting so you can hardly get a freeway bypass built without 10 years of hearings if it comes within a mile of a residential area, so I can only imagine what a high speed rail would cause

[UtwigMU]

Fast trains rock, unfortunately most of the tracks here were laid down during the reign of Emperor Franz Josef. While they were very high tech for 2nd half of 19th century 60km/h average speed makes for less and less commuters every year.

Our goverment is still mentally stuck in the 1930's and is building high-ways, there are plans for higher speed trains and they bought the fastest locomotives in the world - Siemens Eurosprinters (TGV is a train, not a locomotive), but the tracks will probably not reach higher average speed than highway travel, so untill gas costs much much more there's little hope for more train travel. We have also inferior power system, so Eurosprinters cannot do their full potential on our tracks.

I'd love TGV style trains to Vienna, Munich, towards northern Italy, Switzerland, France and towards Hungary, Ukraine.