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[–] 6 points 3 days ago (7 children)

If NYC and LA were the only cities, trains would be amazing. Just one HSR sleeper line straight across the empty desert, trains leaving every 5 minutes to meet demand.

With the amount of passengers and the lack of stops along the way, a state-of-the-art 500-600 km/h maglev like the L0 series shinkansen would be able to bring the travel time down to 6-8 hours while being a lot cheaper, more comfortable, more spacious, and with much better access to the city.

My god, it could even be worth trying to build a hyperloop.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 days ago (2 children)

    hyperloop

    Hyperloop are a scam

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  • [–] 1 point 2 days ago (1 child)

    Yes, so it's a testament to how ridiculously ideal for public transit this fictional scenario is that in this fiction, hyperloop might be a worthy investment.

    One of the reasons hyperloop was a scam is that they never really tried. There were some very public-facing stunts, like the design competitions, but they didn't do the SpaceX thing of throwing a couple billion dollars worth of government subsidies at failing prototypes until they started working.

    Another reason is that high-speed rail makes a lot more sense when you have regular stops like a real-world HSR line would. Accelerating and decelerating take distance, so the faster you go the longer you need to go between stops for a top speed to matter.

    And another reason is that high-speed rail didn't exist yet, and this was presented as a better alternative. If you already have the best open-air HSR money can buy, the next logical step is to stop having it be open-air.

    Though, saying that, an atmospheric pressure pneumatic tube where the surrounding air is brought up to the same speed as the maglev train would probably make a lot more sense than a vacuum tube.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 days ago (2 children)

    Oh man the Shinkansen is amazing. 2 or so hours instead of 9+ by bus to get somewhere while drinking beer or sake and eating is amazing. And you can take a dump lol

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