High-speed trains vs. airline service

Even a straight shot from NYC to Paris at 300MPH would be 12 hours! How would you even maintain such a system? 6 hours for MOW workers to reach the center. And that's assuming the MOW equipment could even attain such speeds as high as 300MPH.

Remember that all modern tunnels (such as those through the Alps) have a safety tunnel as well as the running tunnel(s). Eurotunnel has a third tunnel which can be used for many purposes. It has been used to rescue people stuck on trains, and in case of two fires.

Maintenance of Eurotunnel makes use of the fact there are six segments of tunnel, accessible via the two crossovers.

That said, I think talk of these very long tunnels is pure fantasy. I think a Behring tunnel is possible, but not likely. I don't think any other long tunnels are going to happen.

The Bering Strait is VERY far from densely-populated areas, and rail lines would have to be constructed to it to make a Bering tunnel useful. From Khabarovsk to the Bering Strait is 4500 km, about as far as from NYC to LA. From Edmonton or Vancouver to the Bering Strait is about 3500 km, which is not much better. Not only that, much of the route is permafrost terrain, which can be challenging to build on.

So I think that Gibraltar or Malacca tunnels are at least as likely as a Bering one.

Now for boundaries between tectonic plates, which are a big potential hazard for transoceanic lines. There are three main kinds:

Conservative or transform: Crust is neither created nor destroyed, and the plates move horizontally relative to each other. The San Andreas Fault is the best-known example, and there is one in New Zealand and also some in the Middle East. Midocean ridges are typically crossed by several transform boundaries.

At least four rail lines cross the San Andreas Fault. They cross a little south of Gilroy, a little south of Palmdale, a little south of Victorville, and a little east of Bombay Beach on the Salton Sea. These ones and some others also cross some nearby faults.

Divergent: Volcanic eruptions create crust. In the oceans, mid-ocean ridges, and in the continents, rift valleys.

Convergent: Crust is either pushed upward or pushed downward. In the oceans, subduction zones, making trenches and volcanoes, and in the continents, mountain ranges like the Himalayas. There are several subduction zones in the Pacific Ocean, including one at Japan, which recently produced a big earthquake there.

I wanted to add this question, how do you plan to power those trains under hundreds or thousands of miles under the sea? A general rule of thumb is you need a 1,000 volts per mile, ie 345kV can push electrons around 345 miles. Few catenary wires for trains exceed 25kV, enough to reach out from shore approximately 25 miles, 50 miles total.
Of course higher voltages could be used, but that would require larger clearances (larger tunnels) and huge transformers placed every 50 miles or so. Not a problem on land, but will be a major problem under any ocean.

I wonder just how much basic science is taught in public schools today?

Submarine communications cables are powered by electricity, and they don't seem to have any difficulty working. All that's necessary is to make the conducting parts thick enough; that way the current will have more area to flow through.

Electrical resistance = resistivity*length/area

lpetrich wrote:Submarine communications cables are powered by electricity, and they don't seem to have any difficulty working. All that's necessary is to make the conducting parts thick enough; that way the current will have more area to flow through.

Electrical resistance = resistivity*length/area

With trains we are talking megawatts.

http://www.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&h ... 72&t=h&z=4

Here's a personal map I made. The way I see it, these are the only regions in which we can practically compete with airline services. For the most part, I suspect each corridor could slash, if not eliminate, airline traffic within it's respective corridor. We could likely significantly cut out auto traffic as well; reducing emissions and freeing up capacity to commercial purposes.

I can't see anything else which isn't included as being worth our while, really. Even this I find to be perhaps too much (such as the Gulf and Southeast corridors, as I'm not sure how much air or road traffic there is to steal there, but they seem to be the best candidates for better growth).

Good start, but I think you could bridge Pitt-Philadelphia if not connect Harrisburg-NYC for a Chicago-NYC train in 4 hours. During ground or weather delays, that would be faster than taking to the air. What about a leg to Minneanapolis St. Paul from Chicago? LA-Phoenix and Vegas? Connecting Ohio all the way up with Dayton and Columbus? What about Dallas to Oklahoma City and Tulsa? Also, is there enough of a market from Jacksonville-New Orleans or enough through traffic through Mobile?

One route missing from your map is Chicago- St Louis & Kansas city. What helps here is routes that connect major cities in a state with the state capitol. I suppose the pop in Iowa isn't enough to support a HSR but a heavily used Denver-Omaha-Chicago new Denver Zephyr out to be viable. There may be other ways to connect rapidly growing southern pop centers like Atlanta.

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If HSR ever comes to fruition on the east coast, it would basically kill air service between Boston and Washington.

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Los Angeles to Las vegas and Salt lake City might be a good idea for Boston to update on his map as well. Maybe a connection out to Denver as well, but thats pushing it.

Indeed, I missed out on some lines in the Chicago area, as I'm not familiar with things in that area, I can certainly see Chicago to Kansas City and St Louis.


LA to Las Vegas might net some significant air travel, but I'm sure most of the traffic comes is direct to Las Vegas anyways, so I'm not sure many would fly into LA and then go to Vegas.

LAX to Vegas is a significant air corridor with 39 flights per day on an average weekday just out of LAX from Delta, US Air, Southwest, Spirit, and American. Numerous flights are by mainline aircraft. 12 per day from Burbank, 8 from Ontario, 5 from Long Beach, 7 from Anahiem. 25 of those are Southwest which half probably transfer in Vegas to other flights.

BostonUrbEx wrote: Even a straight shot from NYC to Paris at 300MPH would be 12 hours! How would you even maintain such a system? 6 hours for MOW workers to reach the center. And that's assuming the MOW equipment could even attain such speeds as high as 300MPH.

It would be utterly idiotic to build a transoceanic tunnel running conventional trains. Kind of reminds me of the "road bridge over the Atlantic Ocean" my late father once talked about. Obviously not a sensible proposal by any sane reasoning. All of the proposals I've seen use maglev in evacuated tubes running at a few thousand mph. Faster than air, far less power consumption, but of course hideously expensive, and about as challenging to build with present technology as going to the moon was in the 1960s. Still, I've little doubt they'll be built, but probably on a 2050 to 2100 time frame. For now plain old HSR is our best bet, perhaps supplemented by one or two proof-of-concept evacuated tube maglevs running on dry land for intercontinental distances.